IMPRESSIONS 
OF JAPAN 





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IMPRESSIONS OF 
JAPAN 

BY GEO. H. RITTNER 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN 
BY THE AUTHOR AND HIS FRIENDS 



NEW YORK 

JAMES POTT & CO. 

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY 

1904 



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3)Sbio 



Printed by 

Ballantyne, Hanson cSt' Co. 

Edinburgh 




DEDICATED 

TO 

DOROTHY 



PREFACE 

The object I have had in view in writing these pages 
has been not merely to give a description of my 
journeys through Japan, but to put on record some 
impressions of the development of the Japanese. 

The changes which that country has undergone 
during the last decade have been so rapid and radical, 
that it would have been impossible within the limits 
of a single volume to give any adequate idea of their 
number or nature, for many of the topics touched on 
would require a volume to themselves. 

The greatest change of all seemed to have taken 
place in the country's Art, which twenty years ago 
was its chief and most distinguishing glory ; and I have 
tried to show the reasons for that deterioration. In 
so doing I have brought out the differences between 
town and country life, and hope that by so doing I 
may lead those among my readers, whose good fortune 
it is to visit Japan for themselves, to penetrate beyond 



viii PREFACE 

the modern life of the city into the remote country 
places, where the pristine life of old Japan still 
survives. 

I have to tender to Mr. Max von Grunelius my 
grateful thanks for furnishing me with a number of 
photographs, which have served to make the series of 
illustrations more complete. Without them many 
essential features of land and life must necessarily 
have been omitted. 

G. H. R. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. THE NATURAL BEAUTIES OF THE 

COUNTRY I 

n. THE ART OF JAPAN .... 28 

HI. THE PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES . 55 

IV. BATHING, PRIVATE AND PUBLIC . 80 

V. CHILDREN, OLD AND YOUNG . . 92 

VL THE GEISHA 114 

VII. THE STAGE 127 

VIII. CIVILISATION 136 

IX. MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION . . 161 

X. THE TEMPLES AND THEIR GODS . 188 

XI. "SAYONARA" 205 



INDEX 



215 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Shell Picking at Kamakura 

A Street Scene in Yokohama 

A Mountain Torrent 

Cherry Blossoms 

A Tea Garden at Nikko 

Mount Fujiyama 

A Bronze Vessel 

Basket Making . 

A Group of Japanese 

Temple of Yakushi 

An Umbrella Maker 

A Japanese House 

Man Labour 

A Village Street 

O Hayo . 

Sea Bathing 

Visiting Day 

Tanjo no Sekku 

Jimum Tenn5 

The Geisha 

A Tea-Party . 

A Stage . 



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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



A Model Tea-House 








To face page 142 


A Chinaman 








150 


A Placid Stream 








„ 156 


A LoDESTONE . 








166 


An Avenue of Torii 








^74 


A Temple at Nippo 








182 


The Sacred Bridge . 








188 


The Daibutsu . 








194 


A Temple and its Torii 








„ 202 


At Kamakura . 








„ 206 


" Sayonara " . 








„ 212 



IMPRESSIONS OF JAPAN 

CHAPTER I 

THE NATURAL BEAUTIES OF THE COUNTRY 

" As in strange lands a traveller walking slow, 
In doubt and great perplexity, 
A little before moon-rise hears the low 

Moan of an unknown sea ; 
And knows not if it be thunder, or a sound 

Of rocks thrown down, or one deep cry 
Of great wild beast ; then thinketh, • I have found 
A new land, but I die.' " 

— Tennyson. 

To land in a strange country, far away from your own 
land, possibly without friends, unknown, ignorant of 
the surroundings and the pleasures to come, is in itself 
a charm. But to land in a country, the fame of 
which has so often been written ; the certain know- 
ledge that now at last the opportunity has arrived to 
inspect personally what you have read ; to form ideas 
and compare them with the incomplete picture you 



2 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

have drawn from books ; to judge the people and 
form an opinion of the country — makes life a pleasure. 
Approach Yokohama : when the ship is yet out- 
side the bar she is surrounded by junks of every 
description, filled with men and women in novel 
garments. Hear their strange tongue ; see their 
smiles and happy faces ; watch the town as the steamer 
draws nearer, everything each moment becoming more 
distinct — in all this there is a charm, an inexpressible 
charm one must feel, because one has read and heard 
so much about the country. Ideas are formed about 
many countries ; an imaginative picture of the people 
is drawn in the mind — their ways and customs. Often 
the written description of the place has given you the 
wrong impression ; the crash comes, and a heartrending 
fall is in store, if on landing the imagination has carried 
you too far ; a sickening feeling of despair creeps over 
you, such as is experienced if an ideal is crushed, 
an affinity is not what she appeared to be — the feeling 
a man may experience who is married and finds his 
wife faithless, or whose trusted friend plays him a 
scurvy trick — in all these cases one loses faith in 
one's fellow-beings. So also may a man who forms 
ideas about a country be disappointed, should that 
country not come up to his expectations, and if he is. 



YOKOHAMA 3 

he will probably never allow that any good or natural 
beauty ever existed there, because his mind has re- 
ceived a blow, his ideals are crushed — ideals which 
possibly never existed except in his imagination. 

I formed ideas of Japan before I ever intended to 
visit the country ; ideas too, which, though at the 
time they seemed too high, now when I look back 
and compare them with the impressions I gathered 
whilst I was there, seem to me not half good enough. 
Thus one is often carried away by an imaginative 
mind ; but about Japan no ideas can be correctly 
formed in advance. Until one has been there, no 
ideals can be placed high enough to do the country 
credit. 

Imagine a steamer slowly gliding into port 
surrounded and followed by hundreds of boats 
picturesque in build, with sails of a novel shape, and 
filled with people in dresses one has only read about, 
or possibly seen as European ladies' dressing-gowns, 
colours of such a vivid shade that an artist's brush 
would hardly dare represent them in their true tint 
on canvas, even as he would shun to do credit to an 
eastern sunset when the whole sky is ablaze with every 
colour of the spectrum, crimson fading into orange, 
and yellow again waning into total darkness. No 



4 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

artist, if he wishes to remain popular, dare depict 
such light effects as are here to be seen ; if he did, 
few would admire his work as being natural, while 
thousands would slander him for reproducing on 
canvas what no man ever saw — and why ? Because 
the eye, though it can see such colouring in nature 
itself, cannot retain the image of such an effect, and 
so, though the rendering may be correct in every 
detail, it appears too vivid because the mind has for- 
gotten what the eye really saw. 

Imagine again hearing these people talk, the quaint 
sounds that come to our ears unaccustomed to the 
language, the patter of their busy feet, encased in 
wooden sandals, on the narrow decks of their boats, 
the sails differing in colour from anything to which 
we have been accustomed, and filled with wind which 
gently propels the boats, rocked to and fro in the 
wash of the steamer. In the dim distance the town 
of Yokohama with its frontage of hotels and European 
built houses ; behind them, and scarcely visible, the 
smaller native houses of the Japanese ; soon even 
the jinrickishas can be seen racing down the Bund, 
which faces the sea to the pier, to await the 
arrival of the visitors, all anxious for a fare, ready 
to fleece the stranger at the first opportunity ; 



THE PEOPLE 5 

and even farther in the remote distance the most 
wonderful mountain in the world, that sacred wor- 
shipped mountain, the snow-clad peak of Fujiyama 
standing out clear against the cloudless blue sky, so 
blue as to be almost transparent. The steamer glides 
nearer and nearer until she casts her anchor, and the 
natives scale the ladder, all ready to turn an honest 
penny by carrying passengers' luggage. 

Land there and see the streets, the bustle of busy 
people, small children with babies strapped to their 
backs, narrow streets with picturesque houses and 
tiled roofs, men rushing about bareheaded, women in 
their kimonos walking more sedately ; no noisy trams, 
waggons, or motor cars, no noise except that caused 
by the talk of the people and the gentle rattle of the 
rickishas. Imagine all this, and you have the view 
of Yokohama. 

Fancy yourself for the first time in a strange land 
where everything is novel. You see a new race of 
people who have different manners and customs from 
your own, people who are smaller in stature than what 
you have been used to, clad in costumes brilliantly 
coloured that you have only previously pictured in 
your imagination ; you will see jinrickishas — small 
carriages drawn by men instead of animals — you have 



6 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

only heard about, houses you have read about and 
longed to see. The word house is hardly descriptive 
of what they really look like. Small, low, flat-roofed, 
one-storied houses with picturesque roofs, sometimes 
overgrown with plants, and windows made of lattice- 
work covered with oiled paper, through which, if you 
are of a destructive disposition, you can put your 
finger with ease. You will see rows of wooden shoes 
and sandals standing on the doorstep ready to serve 
their owners when they come out again ; people walk- 
ing about the streets with large yellow paper umbrellas 
open, to keep the sun or rain off them. 

Form an imaginative picture of all this in your 
mind. Get into a rickisha with a coolie instead of 
a horse to draw the carriage, imagine yourself being 
pulled through the streets where everything is novel 
and quaint, shops exhibiting wares you have longed to 
possess : you become fascinated. Imagine yourself 
being pulled up hills in this small vehicle. Glance 
around and see the plants and flowers, the hills fresh 
with spring foliage, the people in costumes your 
imagination has merely pictured, colours such as you 
hardly dared think of. You are alone in your carriage, 
and so have no one to draw your attention from what 
you are seeing, and, being alone, you can think — your 



THE RIVERS 7 

undivided attention can be fixed on what you behold. 
See the people in the fields working with a will — both 
sexes, all ages ; dart in your carriage through villages, 
the shops hung with sign-boards variously coloured, 
houses with flags bearing the sign of the sun — the 
national emblem ; out into the fields again or through 
a wood, a brook of clear, gentle, running water on one 
side, trees and blossoms on the other ; and so you can 
travel for miles, each hour, each moment even, afford- 
ing you new pleasures ; every minute you fancy you 
are face to face with the most wonderful piece of 
scenery you have ever seen. Days seem to pass so 
quickly that you can barely concentrate your mind on 
any individual thing. One day you dart in a rickisha 
through streets and lanes, over hills and down dales ; 
another day you find yourself seated in a flat-bottomed 
boat rushing down streams, with the banks on either 
side one mass of colouring. At Arashiyama the hills 
on either side of the river in spring are covered with 
cherry blossoms, and later in the year their place is 
taken by trees of azaleas, all colours ranging from 
white to mauve and mauve to red, and here and there 
the red of the maple leaf, which in autumn turns to 
bright copper. 

The river lends itself to all manner of excite- 



8 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

ment. Charter a flat-bottomed boat with three or four 
men and shoot the rapids; to see the boat shooting 
round corners every moment one fancies it must be 
dashed against the rocks, but so clever are the steerers 
that an accident is a rarity. The bottom of the boat 
creaks and bends as she rushes down with the stream. 
No two bits of scenery are alike, at every turn a 
picture more beautiful than the last comes into view. 
In some places the water is only a few inches deep, but 
the impetus the boat receives coming through the 
rapid places takes it even over places where the water 
is conspicuous by its scarcity. The river Fujikawa is 
navigable for more than forty miles, and in just over 
four hours we traversed it, starting from Yokaichiba 
and landing without stop at Iwabuchi ; at one moment 
only the white top of Fuji is visible in the distance, 
then again shooting round another bend the whole 
mountain stands out in full glory. It takes the men 
four days to tow their boat up stream again. Hun- 
dreds of men can be seen towing their boats up with 
ropes, bending double under the strain, and at nights 
they are forced to fasten their crafts and seek shelter 
along the banks. The tariff for a trip down the river is 
five yen, which is equivalent to about ten shillings — it 
makes one ask oneself how these people live, on what 



LIGHT EFFECTS 9 

they subsist. In all it takes four men five days to go 
down and up again, five days of hard work, work 
almost verging on slavery, and each man earns in those 
five days two shillings and sixpence. Their staple 
food is rice, and on that and biscuits, with occasionally 
a piece of fish, they seem to thrive. One seldom be- 
holds a half-starved creature, such as one sees in 
England ; their clothes are always neat, never in rags ; 
whatever clothing they have on, though it may be 
scanty, is neatly girdled and tidy. 

The light effects, the most wonderful of nature's 
arts, coming down these rivers are always changing, no 
two moments are they the same. A cloud may for a 
moment obliterate the sun, thereby making the scene 
look cold, the rush of water and its accompanying 
roar appear more noticeable ; the flowers seem to have 
lost much of their splendour, they, too, look as if 
they required something to instil fresh life into them ; 
until suddenly the sun will burst out again, casting 
his warm and brilliant light on the surroundings, 
illuminating the scene and making everything look 
even more beautiful than it did before. The shadows, 
which when the sun was veiled had disappeared, now 
cast long streaks of darkness over the water, and give 
out those wonderful contrasts of light. 



10 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

The lines of Shelley, when he describes how every- 
thing mingles together, come back to one as one sits 
gazing at the surrounding beauty, intent only on the 
present, unheeding the future — 

" The fountains mingle with the rivers, 
And the rivers with the ocean." 

And when he describes nature and her wonders, as 
only a poet can, in the lines — 

*' See the mountains touch high heaven 
And the waves clasp one another," 

one is left to one's reverie until suddenly roused by 
the shrill cry of the boatman as he rounds a corner — 
a cry like that of a Venetian gondolier — warning an 
upcoming boat lest the two should collide ; but be- 
yond that cry of warning and the sound of rushing 
water an absolute peace reigns. 

On our tour down the Fujikawa we accommodated 
a little Japanese lady, the wife of the hotel manager at 
Yokaichiba, with a place in our boat. The pangs of 
fear this poor little lady experienced were amusing to 
behold ; she hardly dared raise her eyes from the 
bottom of the boat, where she remained squatting on 
her heels for more than four hours. Whenever a 
dangerous passage presented itself, or the boat shot 




To face p, 10 



2. A MOUNTAIN TORRENT. 



RIVER FUJIKAWA 11 

more rapidly than usual over boulders, our little friend 
bowed herself in prayer to Buddha, chanting to 
herself the whole time. The gratitude she showered 
on us, when we reached our destination, for accom- 
panying her down the river was touching ; a prince 
could not have received greater homage than we 
received. To be of service to a Japanese is a supreme 
pleasure. 

For three weeks we travelled inland, with no one 
but a Japanese coolie to accompany us ; he acted 
as spokesman and interpreter, wherever his deficient 
knowledge of the English language permitted of such 
a thing. He was also luggage man in chief, and 
carried the stores for three weeks, whilst at the rate 
of a shilling a day he hired the services of any coolie 
he could find to shoulder the small amount of baggage 
we took with us. The wage this man received was 
seventy-five sen per diem, equivalent to about one 
shilling and sixpence, and, after being paid two even- 
ings in succession, he asked whether we minded keep- 
ing the rest for him until the end of the three weeks. 
He paid his own lodging bill, food, everything, and 
subsisted for three weeks on three shillings ; his ex- 
cuses for not requiring payment every day were that 
his pockets were not large enough to hold so much 



12 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

money, and that three shillings was ample for his 
requirements during the period for which we had 
engaged him. I believe he considered himself a 
young Croesus when at Gotemba we parted and he 
received the twenty-eight shillings and sixpence balance 
due to him. 

Most days we walked about fifteen or twenty 
miles, no horses or rickishas being available anywhere 
in the interior of the country. Fortunately we halted 
at places like Lake Shoji, where European food to a 
certain extent was obtainable, and so we were enabled 
to replenish our provision basket, which at times ran 
very low. Sometimes we had to write a few days 
ahead to larger towns asking them to forward bread 
to some small place where we contemplated staying 
the night, because to obtain bread in the interior is 
almost an impossibility. 

By walking through the country we were enabled 
to admire and see its beauties much better than had 
we gone by train, and to admire the flowers and 
the wonderful tints of the trees, which varied in 
colour from yellow to copper. The hillsides were at 
times covered with cherry blossoms, which, at a dis- 
tance, made the country look as if it were enveloped 
in snow, or as if the trees were covered with hoar- 



THE VILLAGES 13 

frost, and on approaching the scene the sun's rays cast 
a warm glow over the light pink blossoms and made 
the hills look as if they were blazing with a colour, 
indescribably soft and beautiful in tone. 

To pass through small villages without in many 
cases a single shop, villages to which few Europeans 
ever found their way, was extremely interesting, not 
only to ourselves, but, from the apparent amusement 
of the villagers, interesting to them also. They all 
rushed out of their houses to see the travellers ; an 
electric spark seemed to pass through the com- 
munity whenever we approached, informing it of 
visitors. The children used our legs as bridges, to 
their immense enjoyment, and amused themselves by 
darting in and out of our lower limbs, whilst the taller 
generations would be so struck by our heights that 
they would measure theirs against us ; sometimes with 
outstretched arms they could not even reach our heads. 
It makes one often think that small things please small 
minds, but if a pigmy is seen walking down Piccadilly, 
or a Chinaman crossing Trafalgar Square, are they not 
also the centre of amusement .? People stand still to 
look at them, and the street arabs probably mock them 
in derision, the midget for his minute stature and the 
Chinaman because he wears a pigtail. In Japan they 



14 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

look upon you as a curiosity, but are not so ill-bred as 
to mock either your height, or what seems to them 
even more curious, your fair hair. 

Sometimes in June swamps of lotus flowers can be 
seen, not planted so that each colour is separate from 
the rest, but en masse, the whole a wonderful piece of 
colouring, thousands of blossoms all out at one time, 
hardly two colours exactly the same, people standing 
in the midst of them weeding them out or picking the 
flowers to send to the larger towns for the market. 
The colours of the kimonos stand out against the softer 
tones of the lotus flowers, the pickers mostly with a 
soft piece of linen tied gracefully round their heads, 
after the fashion of a Dutch cap, to shelter them from 
the heat of the sun and to keep the perspiration from 
dropping into their eyes. Every one seems busy, run- 
ning about as if he had the work of the world on 
his shoulders ; and whilst the women and children 
pick or sort out the flowers, the men carry buckets 
of manure to cultivate the ground, or transport cans 
of water from the wells and water the plants. I 
think I can truthfully say that I never, during my 
whole stay in Japan, saw a man idle. Sometimes in 
the towns one may see a beggar, but he is so old and 
infirm that work would be impossible. 



TEA-HOUSES 15 

At some of the larger places, where tea-houses 
are prominently placed along the roadside, can be 
seen those wonderful arbours of wistaria, purple and 
white blossoms hanging down in masses from the 
trellis-work above ; sometimes whole verandahs sur- 
round the houses, literally covered with this mag- 
nificent flower. To sit underneath one of these 
arbours and admire the surrounding country is en- 
chanting ; no sun can penetrate the trellis-work on 
account of the masses of flowers, and later, on account 
of the covering caused by the thickly-grown leaves. 
Under these bowers one can sit all day watching the 
streets with their interesting people passing, or the 
gardens magnificently laid out and wonderfully well 
kept. It is almost impossible to find a weed on the 
grass, or an ugly twig on a tree. The tea-house 
keeper probably takes a morning constitutional with 
his family round his garden, to see whether the night 
has brought out anything to ofl^end the most critical, 
and if so, that offending twig or weed is plucked up 
and thrown away where it can never again make itself 
objectionable. 

At one tea-house, called Gammon-ga-fuchi, where 
the gardens are perhaps finer than anywhere else in 
Japan, I took no less than twelve photographs, all 



16 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

different, and each looking as if it might have been 
a portion of an enormous park, whereas in two 
minutes you could walk over the whole " estate." 
So artistically are these arranged, with their diminu- 
tive hills, planted with tiny shrubs in many cases a few 
inches only in height, but perhaps hundreds of years 
old, and their toy temples and small stone torii^ an 
exact representation of the real temples at Nikko, that 
one almost imagines oneself in some palace grounds. 

When I visited Gammon-ga-fuchi I was fortunate 
enough to fall in with a party of Japanese who had 
walked out from Nikko along the bank of the Daiya- 
gawa, and were having a picnic at the tea-house. I 
asked whether I might take their photograph, and, in 
return for a promise of a copy to some of their leaders, 
was entertained in a most lavish manner. Nothing 
could have exceeded the hospitality I received from 
these comparatively poor men, manufacturers and 
artisans. Beer, bottle after bottle, was brought, in 
which they insisted on drinking my health. I was 
forced to partake of their cakes and sweetmeats ; 
they insisted on my smoking their cigarettes, and 
endeavoured to make me understand their language. 
What other nation would treat a stranger in this 
way } 



LAND OF FLOWERS 17 

The names given to Japan are numerous, but it 
is still impossible to find one that embraces the whole 
charm of the country — the Land of Flowers, the 
Land of the Rising Sun, and many others — but none 
of them convey to one's mind all that one feels about 
the place. The country is a garden of colour, 
whether flowers or leaves, but so also is the country 
the land of the rising sun ; both appellations are 
correct, and still in each there is something wanting. 

Ask European residents in Japan how they like 
the country and what they think of the people .? 
Personally, I seldom heard a foreigner say anything 
in favour of either. But then one must realise that 
Japan has much sameness, much want of variety ; 
one place is more or less like another, one piece of 
sea as blue as its neighbour, and one garden barely 
differs from the next one. To a person who only 
spends a short time there the monotony is not felt, 
because there is always something novel to notice and 
be interested in ; but to a person who has lived many 
years in Japan, and who has gone over to the country 
with the intention of settling there for some length 
of time, the monotony is apparent, probably because 
he remains very much in one place and never 
travels about in search of interest. The average 



18 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

resident has hardly been further than a few miles 
from the town he lives in. He puts it off, thinking 
he can always go to such-and-such a place, or else 
he accumulates the holiday allowed him every year 
by his firm for three or five years, and comes home 
to Europe again to see his friends. These residents 
have probably less to say in favour of the people than 
in favour of the country, but then that is probably 
owing to a feeling of jealousy, because they find it 
hard to compete with them in trade, on account of 
the people's dishonesty, and in art, because they them- 
selves have not such a fine feeling of what is artistic. 
They attempt to imitate the arrangement of the 
Japanese houses and find it a hopeless task, they want 
to arrange fans on their walls, and discover that 
whichever way they turn them they look stiff and 
ugly, whilst a Japanese in a few moments in his own 
house would arrange those same fans in such a way 
that no one could find fault with the arrangement. 

Each month has its descriptive blossom. The 
plum blossoms come out at the end of January and 
last into March, even before many trees show signs 
of shooting, and give one such wonderful impressions 
of the beauties of the hillsides, that one imagines 
what it must be (when all the trees are covered with 



CHERRY BLOSSOMS 19 

leaves. At times the plum trees are few and far 
between, which makes them all the more beautiful, 
their large, snow-white petals shining in the light of a 
wintry sun. 

April brings out the cherry blossoms, when the 
whole nation makes holiday and turns out to admire 
the colour. Tokyo and Kioto have long avenues 
where there are no other trees and no other blossoms. 
Standing at one end and looking down the line one 
sees nothing but the wonderful soft tones of these 
flowers. Occasionally one finds a cake stall along the 
side of the road with an old woman under a gigantic 
paper umbrella selling her sweetmeats ; sometimes 
one comes across an open space of ground, where 
seats are placed at the expense of the town, and on 
which the Japanese sit crowded together admiring the 
wonders of nature. On a specified day every man, 
woman, and child turns out to see this sight, and prac- 
tically to worship what they see. The young children 
are told legends about their forefathers many hundreds 
of years ago. Each year they are told the same story 
and yet each year they listen with open mouth and 
bated breath to the same deeds of heroism ; they commit 
it to memory, and when they have children of their own, 
relate the same story, so that the legends never die. 



20 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

One of the salient features of Japanese life are these 
annual festal days, when the whole population turns 
out, and every child has a small branch of cherry 
blossom. In the larger towns the geisha perform the 
wonderful cherry dance, as it is called, where every 
girl, with a perfect branch of those wonderful flowers, 
dances in unison with her fellow-dancers. There is 
never a hitch or a forgotten step ; the kimonos are of 
most extravagant colours, and yet colours that blend 
and harmonise with the blossoms and the surrounding 
scene. Sometimes fifteen or twenty of these little 
girls dance together ; each turn is studied with unend- 
ing patience ; one can hardly see any individual step 
because their movements are so slow and graceful ; 
one can only see and admire the movement as a 
whole. 

Towards the end of April and beginning of May 
the wistarias begin to take the place of the cherry 
blossoms ; every tea-house and garden has its arbour 
hung with masses of flowers, and the surrounding hills 
are covered with azalea trees luxuriant with the soft- 
ness of their colours. 

One month the banks of a river will be pink with 
cherry blossoms and the next white and mauve with 
thousands of azaleas. So quick are the changes that 



CHRYSANTHEMUMS 21 

there is never an interval when the country looks bare 
and devoid of colour. 

June will see the fields covered with irises ranging 
from white to scarlet, every colour of the spectrum 
almost, and still each so perfect in tone that none can 
be called hard ; acres upon acres of flowers such as 
the imagination of man can hardly picture, thousands 
and tens of thousands of flowers forming a carpet 
over the fields. These again are superseded by the 
large peony, which is mostly white, though in China, 
where it is grown in great abundance, almost any 
colour can be seen, even black. The average peony 
has a diameter of six inches, and sometimes the plant 
grows to a height of several feet, covered with blooms. 

Thus each month has its own particular flower 
until the autumn comes and changes the leaves of the 
trees from green to brown and brown to yellow. The 
maple leaf, red in spring, turns a bright copper, and 
that tree, dotted as it is amongst the more subdued 
colours of the autum tints, relieves the whole. 

Towards the end of October the greatest show of 
flowers comes into season, the flower for which, above 
all others, Japan has made a name — the chrysanthemum. 
Banks, tier above tier, of these wonderful flowers can 
be seen in Tokyo. The Mikado gives an annual 



22 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

garden f6te every year at Akasaka, to which he invites 
the society of Japan to witness the show ; it is probably 
the finest in the world. At Dangozaka, also in 
Tokyo, the plants are one mass of bloom, and many 
have several differently coloured flowers growing 
from the same root, the result of many years' 
patience and careful grafting. Some are larger than 
soup plates, the petals forming a complete semi- 
circle ; others, with petals curving inwards, resemble 
an enormous ball. Every colour and every shape of 
flower imaginable is displayed there. Sometimes all 
the buds except one are nipped, and instead of hun- 
dreds, and even thousands, of flowers blossoming on 
one plant, only one will be left, but that one a triumph 
in size, the horticulturist's pride. These flowers last 
well into November, the finest flower in Japan and the 
last of the year. It heralds the winter ; with it the 
leaves begin to fall, the trees become bare, rain and 
snow follow in the footsteps of sunshine and flowers, 
disease and unhappiness take the place of health and 
joy. The flowers and green trees and all the pleasures 
that accompany them can remain only in the memory, 
whilst the short bleak days and cold nights of a 
winter, shorter, but not very different from our own, 
are bound to run their accustomed course. Every- 



THE WINTER 23 

thing that was beautiful seems lost in oblivion, but the 
recollection remains. 

Still I think the remembrance of the beauties of 
spring, summer, and autumn, which have passed away, 
the recollection of the warm full spring days when the 
trees first show signs of green, the hotter summer 
when everything is in its perfection, and the autumn 
with its lengthening nights ; the nine months from 
March to November which have been months of 
pleasure, happiness, and contentment, months of toil and 
labour which the people have passed through, helps 
them to survive the winter months and to be contented. 
Their souls have had their fill of the wonders of nature, 
their hearts have been satiated with the natural beauties 
they have seen, and they live content to await the 
advent of spring and the joyous return of warmth. 

Their houses are badly adapted to the severities of 
winter ; the walls are thin and mostly of wood ; paper 
takes the place of panes of glass to keep out the cold 
winds and snow ; a small jar (hibachi) filled with red- 
hot charcoal has to serve them instead of a fireplace. 
Over these movable fires they squat in a circle, and 
try to keep the cold out of their bodies, sipping the 
while hot brewed tea or hot sak^^ imagining that they 
are happy, and never permitting their minds to dwell 



24 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

on the horrors of cold and poor food. The Japanese 
have such an extraordinary power over their feelings 
that, however miserable they feel, to a spectator they 
appear the very essence of happiness and joy. 

When I visited the country I made a tour on foot 
from Gotemba round the base of Fujiyama, the sacred 
mount of Japan. From every side I was able to see 
it, and from every side it seemed to look more beau- 
tiful. Sometimes a boat would ferry us across a lake, 
and there Fuji's image would be reflected in the water, 
its snow-clad top looming out against a deep blue sky. 
From every quarter I was enabled to admire it, and at 
every hour of the day from early morn, when the sun, 
rising behind the mountain, caused it to throw long 
shadows on the ground — shadows which, as the sun 
rose higher in the heavens, diminished until almost 
overhead his glorious rays spread over the moun- 
tain, illuminating the snow to greater brilliancy 
— to late in the evening when the sun was sinking, 
causing the snow to vary from white to pink ; and 
back again to white, when the sun set and the twi- 
light had faded. Then the moon would rise, causing 
the mountain to look totally changed again. Instead 
of a cold white snow after the first darkness had set in, 
a silvery glimmer would appear, the reflections in the 



MOUNT FUJIYAMA 25 

lakes clearer even and more distinct now that the 
wind had dropped ; no sound to disturb the mind and 
destroy the impressions and feelings ; an absolute 
stillness reigned. The whole scene was one almost 
of overpowering solitude, no one near, no sound of 
voices, nothing but the view of Fujiyama, ever chang- 
ing and yet ever more beautiful. 

Numbers of poems have been dedicated to this 
wonderful mountain, and amongst the finest is one 
written about the tenth century a.d., of which Mr. 
Basil Hall Chamberlain gives an adequate rendering in 
one of his books : — 

" What name might fitly tell, what accents sing, 

Thine awful, godlike grandeur ? 'Tis thy breast 
That holdeth Narusawa's flood at rest, 

Thy side whence Fujikawa's waters spring. 

Great Fusiyama, towering to the sky ! 

A treasure art thou given to mortal man, 
A God Protector watching o'er Japan : 

On thee for ever let me feast mine eye." 

Tradition tells us that Fuji sprang up in one night, 
and that Lake Biwa, about a hundred miles to the 
east of Kioto, sank at the same time. The mountain 
itself is volcanic, and was last seen in eruption at the 
beginning of the eighteenth century. In shape it 



26 NATURAL BEAUTIES 

resembles a sugar cone, perfect in form. It is almost 
surrounded by rivers and lakes, and appears towering 
above everything, a solitary mass of snow and rock ; 
no other mountain or even hill of any size within 
sight of it. It may be its solitary grandeur that 
appeals to one, or it may be the unique shape of the 
mountain ; no other mountain in the world impresses 
one as Fuji does. In midsummer thousands of 
pilgrims ascend it, and pray the whole way up. The 
goddess of the mountain, called Ko-no-Hana-Saku- 
ya-Hime, which means " Princess who makes the 
Flowers of the Trees to blossom," is worshipped there. 
She is more often called Sengen or Asama, and has 
many shrines dedicated to her. The pilgrims when 
they ascend are usually clothed in white, and carry 
bells with which they invoke the gods. 

The height of the mountain is not so great, only 
12,500 feet, but what impresses one is the fact that 
it stands all alone, and therefore appears much 
bigger. 

The first time I saw Fuji again after landing at 
Yokohama was at about 5 a.m. I had taken the train 
from Nagoya bound for Kodzu, near Miyanoshita. 
There was no sleeping-car attached to the train, so I 
had to content myself with the seat for a bed. I 



THE GODDESS OF FUJI 27 

remember we stopped at a small station in the early 
morning, and, on opening my eyes, I saw out of the 
window the sun rise behind Fuji ; the whole country 
seemed on fire, the snow of the mountain a vivid pink, 
the blossoms on all the trees round lit up by the 
morning sun. It was a sight no one, no matter 
how devoid of feeling, could forget. No man 
could see that sight and not feel its charm. I had 
barely time thoroughly to take in the scene — 
everything seemed to surge through my brain at once 
— when the train started off again, and Fuji was lost 
in the distance. That one view of the mountain 
decided my further plans. I felt I could not leave 
Japan without going round it, and felt equally certain 
that the charm of it, and the impressions I had formed 
on first acquaintance, could only be strengthened by a 
longer sojourn in its vicinity. 

Even as the flowers of Japan are unique, not 
only in variety but in splendour ; even as the people 
and their costumes are descriptive of the country, so 
also is Fujiyama the one and only mountain, un- 
surpassed in beauty. 



CHAPTER II 

THE ART OF JAPAN 

No country in the world is probably so artistic as 
Japan ; the inhabitants from their earliest childhood 
are taught to love nature, and from that the finest 
art springs. A glimpse at their gardens, perhaps 
not larger than a few square yards, but made to look 
like parks ; everything in harmony, tiny wooden 
bridges, too small for any human being to stand 
on, built across a stream a few inches broad, with 
water rippling over bright pebbles, shows one the 
perfection to which art in nature can be brought. 
There are special artists in Japan who make a study 
of laying out these gardens ; they make plans, suggest 
stones, and the colour of the fish to be placed in the 
ponds. If you are staying at a tea-house, slide back 
the paper windows and look out. The sight that 
presents itself is one not easily to be forgotten — 
I am taking my picture from a small tea-house at 
Mogi, near Nagasaki. In front the sea, indescribably 

38 




6. A BRONZE VESSEL. 



To face p. 28 



MOGI 29 

blue, a sky with barely a cloud, the gentle sound of 
an incoming tide, waves splashing against the rocks 
on which one can see natives sitting contemplating the 
beauties around them ; below the window a garden, 
small in its dimensions, yet appearing so large, small 
ponds with goldfish, diminutive bridges spanning 
model streams a few inches only in breadth, the 
water running over stones or rocks in imitation of 
a waterfall, stone torii in front of a toy temple, the 
whole garden an imitation of a wonderfully laid out 
park. Turn round again and see the empty room ; 
you cannot help but admire that one kakemono hanging 
on the wall, or that one vase of blossoms, because 
there is nothing else in the room to attract your 
attention. 

In that one day, in those few hours, if my pen 
has been able to picture to your imagination this 
scene, you have beheld Nature in all her glory. 
Those few hours have been hours of pure enjoy- 
ment ; they have been, in fact, life, because life 
and nature have been at work hand in hand. Where 
nature has been deficient in the artistic sense, human 
hand has helped to make good the deficiency, and 
should nature have produced anything out of sym- 
pathy with its surroundings, the hand of man has. 



30 THE ART OF JAPAN 

in Japan, assisted to make the whole scene a most 
beautiful picture. 

In small things the Japanese are wonderfully 
artistic, no country can paint china better, or carve 
more perfectly, whether in ivory or wood ; but in 
big things they seem to lose themselves entirely, and 
flounder trying to imitate what they do not under- 
stand. Their own native buildings are ugly, but 
their imitation of a European house is uglier still. 

A Japanese seldom paints or draws from nature. 
He sees what he wishes to paint, studies it with his 
eyes, and commits it to memory, before he attempts 
to put it on paper or on silk. Thus paintings on 
screens, or kakemonos, are the work of a few minutes ; 
a few quick flourishes of the brush and the thing is 
finished. Their ideas of perspective are terrible ; a 
house may as well, according to them, rest on nothing, 
or be built in the sky, so long as the finished picture 
is something artistic. They hate being bound by 
certain laws, whether of perspective or colour. They 
seldom paint anything with finished lines ; the whole 
is a sort of vignetted picture, and the lines dwindle 
oflF into infinity. I once saw a picture of Mount 
Fujiyama by a celebrated Japanese artist, showing 
the mountain indistinctly visible above a rising mist, 



ARTISTS 31 

and two dragons having a death-struggle below. Each 
— the mountain and the beasts — was marvellously 
executed, every detail exact, but the whole looked 
an impossibility ; a mountain does not, except in a 
nightmare, recline gracefully on the chests of rampant 
dragons. The Japanese are idealists ; they form ideas, 
and those ideas they reproduce without working 
upon any fundamental rules. The result may seem 
to us stiff and unnatural, but it is true to those ideas, 
though it may not be always true to nature. An 
artist will sometimes watch a bird or a goldfish for 
days, studying some particular bend of the head or 
curve of the tail ; after each day he will have noticed 
one thing, and have retained every line in his memory, 
and when he gets home in the evening will draw 
what he remembers. Day after day he will go to 
the same spot untiringly and watch, until at length 
the whole of what he wanted to reproduce is im- 
pressed on his mind, and that he draws. 

Paintings by the old Japanese artists cannot be 
bought ; they are as jealously guarded in Japan as 
the Italian masterpieces are in Italy. What are 
bought, and bought by the thousands, are wonder- 
fully well imitated old kakemonos^ so well produced 
that it would take a connoisseur to tell them from 



82 THE ART OF JAPAN 

the originals. The gold is made to look several 
hundreds of years old, the silk threads of an em- 
broidery are so carefully worked as to be in places 
bare, to trick the buyer and induce him to believe 
he has caught a wonderful bargain. 

Japanese art has undoubtedly sprung from China 
vid Korea. An extraordinary fact about it is, that 
the period when Japanese art was at its highest, the 
art of Europe was also at its best. At that period, 
between 1500 and 1600 a.d., most of the art of 
Japan was of a scriptural nature, the priests in most 
cases being the artists. Art itself has probably origi- 
nated with religion ; the attempts made to build 
temples and shrines to the gods has been in nearly 
all countries the commencement of art. Witness the 
art of Greece. They first fashioned statues imper- 
sonating some god, or built temples in which they 
could worship their divinity. The same in Egypt. 
All the art in that country, at least the art that has 
been handed down to us, has sprung from the wish 
of the people to appease their gods by dedicating 
some beautiful shrine to them. 

The finest European architecture is seen in churches, 
and the zenith both of architecture and art throughout 
the world was in the fifteenth century. Since that 



RELrOTON 88 

time, especially in l^urope, it has been on the down- 
ward grade, partly ov/ing to the more matter-of-fact 
tastes of the people, partly owing to the decrease of 
artistic feeling, and partly through religion becoming 
i^vitry day less of a worship than it was. 

The more established a religion, the greater is 
the artistic taste displayed in its temples and churches, 
which makes itself again felt in the artistic tastes 
of the nation. Through the numerous sects and 
denominations of the Christian religion much of the 
art which was formerly in vogue has been lost. 
Churches are no longer in Europe adorned and em- 
bellished as they used to l)e in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. Mark the grandeur and 
magnificence of some of the churches in Rome, 
which were built in the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, and compare them with the 
more modern churches. It is possible that the de- 
cline of this art is due to the churches having less 
money at their disposal than they had, but is probably 
accounted for by the fact that whereas the Roman 
Catholic Church is the oldest, and was then almost 
universal, now so many sects and denominations have 
sprung up, all professing the same belief, but worship- 
ping in different manners, that the money which would 



34 THE ART OF JAPAN 

formerly have gone to enrich the Church of Rome 
is utilised by the individual churches to whom it is 
bequeathed or given. 

It may appear from this that I wish to suggest 
that the continuance of the art of Japan is due to 
religion ; but that I do not believe to be true, any 
more than I suggest that the decline in Euro- 
pean art is due to the decrease in religious feeling. 
Japanese art, like our own, emanated from a 
wish to glorify the Buddhist or Christian deity, and 
was commenced in both cases by the teachers and 
propagators of those religions ; but in the one case 
it took a deeper root, and has lasted longer, because the 
contaminating influences of the civilised world have 
not yet had svifficient time to stamp it out ; in the 
other case — that is, in our own — art has decreased, and, 
to a great extent, I suggest, because of the religious 
differences which exist in the Christian community. 

The whole art of Japan is based on the unconven- 
tional method with which they go to work. The abso- 
lute indifference they exhibit for any rules has probably 
gone a great step towards making their art so fasci- 
nating, because being essentially unconventional they 
appeal to Europeans as something novel. 

To return again to the art of the country, an art 



PAINTING 35 

which is sometimes termed the only remaining Living 
Art. Some travellers, I think, are so much carried away 
by what they see in Japan that they force themselves 
to believe that art has failed to exist in any other 
country. I am willing to admit and firmly believe 
that no other nation in the world can compete with 
them in art as a nation, but does that mean that our 
modern artists fail to produce effects, paintings, or 
sculptures as fine as anything in Japan ? The art of 
Europe cannot be compared with Japanese art ; they 
are too different. Our modern painters copy models, 
or paint landscapes, or, like Mr. Watts, insert heads or 
figures of living persons into a picture of pure fiction. 
In Japan the artist aims merely at effects ; he sees and 
learns what he wants to paint, and, having mastered his 
subject, reproduces what he has seen in colour. One 
seldom sees a Japanese artist with canvas and easel 
painting a temple or waterfall, however picturesque it 
may appear to him. His painting is merely an impres- 
sion, wonderfully executed, with as few strokes of his 
brush as possible. 

Two meanings can be given to the term Living 
Art : the one is art which is so true to nature that it 
impresses the mind as something living, that stands 
out, and that, when looked at from a distance, gives 



36 THE ART OF JAPAN 

one the impression not of so much paint on a piece of 
paper, but of life itself. I once saw in Japan a painting 
of a flight of birds so accurately reproduced that one 
almost imagined each bird had breath and power of 
flight. Is that the meaning of Living Art, and the 
only meaning ? I contend that Living Art may also 
mean art which, though executed hundreds of years 
ago, is still as beautiful to the modern eye as it was 
then. Does not the art of Italy, the art of Michael 
Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and the many others still 
exist ? Is it not to this day imitated, if imitation 
of art is possible ? Go to the Sistine Chapel, or visit 
the Raphael Stanze in the Vatican at Rome, Is that 
art dead ? Can art lie dormant ? It must be either 
dead or living. If this latter definition of Living Art 
is correct, surely, then, the art of Japan is not the only 
Living Art .? If a picture is capable of appealing to 
the soul as something real, capable even of speaking to 
one and touching the core of one's heart, as pictures in 
Europe by ancient and modern painters do, how then 
can art be dead ? 

The Japanese as a nation are universally artistic ; 
one cannot enter a Japanese house and find fault with 
any particular thing : each kakemono is in accordance 
with its surroundings. In the choice of these kake- 



KAKEMONOS 37 

monos the Japanese are most careful. Seldom is 
more than one hung in a room, prominently placed, 
and still not so prominently as to attract the eye at 
once, perhaps hung on a side wall instead of im- 
mediately opposite the door. Alongside it the guest 
will find a vase artistically arranged with blossoms of 
such a colour as not to clash with the painting. The 
arrangement of these branches of blossoms is the 
work of hours sometimes ; a branch of cherry blossoms 
must be arranged to look as if it were growing, 
a pot of lotus flowers placed to make one believe 
them to be in a state of nature. Every one who has 
given this subject (the art of arrangement) a thought, 
will know how hard it is to place several stiff branches 
of cherry blossoms in a vase artistically. I have 
watched small children in Japan, sitting on their heels, 
bending a twig here or a leaf there, ever and again 
leaning back to watch the effect, heating the stems to 
make them more pliable ; with unending patience 
they will work until the whole is complete. The 
arrangement looks as if it had been a matter of chance ; 
the flowers seem to grow, each leaf and branch bend 
so gracefully that one is forced to believe it to have 
been a work of love, a labour for art's sake. In 
private houses the floral decorations are often under- 



38 THE ART OF JAPAN 

taken each day by men who have given their whole 
lives to it. Children are taught from their earliest 
childhood, and even to them it is no toilsome labour, 
but by patience — and with that they are gifted — they 
all in the end succeed. 

You may walk for miles in Japan, and at each bend 
of the road an effect more striking than the former 
one will present itself. Should a stream not harmonise 
with a mountain it will have its course altered ; should 
an inartistic tree have the insolence to grow on a 
hillside covered with mauve and white azaleas it will 
be cut down by the neighbouring inhabitants. No- 
thing may look out of place. 

A Japanese will sometimes walk miles or climb a 
mountain to watch a sunset from a particular spot. 
Imagine an English farmer or a farm labourer, after a 
day's work, climbing some mountain in Wales to 
watch a sunset or to obtain a view of some distant 
landscape. His friends and relations would that 
evening meet together and consult as to what brain 
specialist he should see, or would say he was in love ; 
they would invent any excuse except the correct one — 
that his life was empty without some feeling of natural 
beauty. Few of the poorer people at home can 
imagine that the soul may require something beyond 



UNIVERSAL ART 39 

the ordinary, some gift not produced by man but by 
nature. If a nation is artistic, it lives for its art ; if a 
country has no love of art, it must of necessity indulge 
in some other form of recreation; and too often, I 
fear, that recreation is found in a public-house or 
gambling-den, the beginning of the end — man's certain 
degradation. Art can even be carried to such a pitch 
that drunkenness itself becomes artistic — the greatest 
living artist in Japan executes his best work when 
drunk with sake. Not only is his touch bolder, but 
he is also carried away by an imagination at all times 
excitable, but which when he is drunk becomes some- 
thing almost superhuman. His paintings become weird. 
His drunkenness is not that of an imbecile, not that 
of a man who becomes sleepy in his cups, a sluggard 
or soaker, but rather that of a madman, mad only in 
his art, his brain on fire, his soul inspired by the aid 
of drink, longing to make use of his talent, and to 
place on record what his drunken mind has pictured. 
It is hard to walk through the streets of Yokohama, 
Tokyo, or any large town at night, without seeing a 
single drunken man ; but one never expects to see, nor 
can one see every third person drunk as one can any 
night in the year in most of the poorer parts of 
London or of any large town ; and what one will 



40 THE ART OF JAPAN 

never see in Japan — the most loathsome sight for 
any man to behold — a woman drunk, no matter of 
what station in life. 

The Japanese women from their birth are taught 
to be artistic. A mother's first care, after her child 
is born, is the preparation of its kimono ; the younger 
the child the brighter the colour chosen for its dress. 
The richer the mother the purer the silk, the more 
unique the design ; each child's dress will have some 
befitting colour according to the month in which it is 
born, and no expense is spared, no sacrifice too great 
to attain that end. Small children of five and six 
years old will carry their smaller brothers and sisters 
strapped like a knapsack on their backs, and those 
who have no brothers or sisters will have a doll sub- 
stituted ; and so they are taught, whilst still almost 
babies themselves, to tend and care for the younger 
ones. Until they marry their great aim is to look 
beautiful, to attract the admiration of their friends, 
both men and women ; their hair is artistically arranged, 
so saturated with oil as to make it almost impossible 
of untidiness. It is very seldom taken down or combed, 
perhaps once a week, and then only by an expert 
hairdresser, whose task it is to rearrange it ; the 
placing of the gold lacquered combs is a work of art, 



THE KIMONO 41 

and here and there can be seen a flower just visible 
under the dark folds of their hair. How much more 
beautiful is all this — a becoming dress, exquisite in 
colour and design, richly embroidered ; the obi (sash) 
neatly fixed at the back, and held in place by a thin 
piece of silk cord ; every colour perfect in tone ; no 
boots to injure the anatomy of the foot, or high heels, 
only a simple straw sandal covered with felt, on to 
which the foot is fixed by means of placing the big 
and first toe between a piece of cord ; no hat to spoil 
the tout ensemble — how much more beautiful, I say, 
is all this than a European dress, in most cases chosen 
without a particle of taste, and a hat to match — a hat, 
forsooth ! I feel almost ashamed to apply such a word 
to a flower-garden surrounded by enormous ostrich 
feathers — few colours harmonising, everything clashing. 
Pockets neither the European nor the Japanese ladies 
seem to have, but the latter people use the sleeves of 
their kimonos as a receptacle for whatever they wish 
to put there ; the former class either lose that for 
which they require a pocket, or do without the 
necessary articles. 

All is not gold that glitters, and even in Japan 
— the country about which so many have raved, and 
about which so few have had anything but good to 



42 THE ART OF JAPAN 

tell — everything is not perfect ; but then what country 
or man is perfect. Go to Osaka and climb into a 
jinrickisha ; the coolie need not pull you far before 
the unpleasant odours of the place become perceptible, 
odours the like of which I have experienced only in 
one other place, namely, in the native Chinese town 
of Canton. The Japanese will tell you in perfect 
good faith that these odours are quite healthy ; that, 
however, is small comfort to the particular organ to 
which they are perceptible. The town is intersected by 
canals into which all manner of filth is thrown ; bridges 
span these canals, and whilst crossing them the odour 
seemed worse. Having lived all my life in a town, 
the smells hardly affected my nasal organs as much as 
those of my friend with whom I visited the city. He 
was fresh from the Australian bush, where, according 
to him, the air is always wafted straight from heaven, 
with no contaminating influences to affect it. 

In most Japanese villages the smells are not of 
the sweetest, but any inconvenience derived from them 
is fully compensated for by the interest to be found 
there and the beauties to be seen at every street 
corner. 

Whilst going through the towns I saw most of 
the works of art being manufactured. The Satsuma 



SATSUMA 43 

at Kobe, earthenware pots most wonderfully painted — 
whole scenes of country life, whole stories depicted on 
small vases — requiring for their inspection a strong 
magnifying glass, and yet the men who paint them do 
so in many cases without even spectacles. One small 
cup, three inches in diameter, was shown me having 
painted on it five hundred butterflies, the colour of 
almost every one different, and yet each perfect in 
form and design. On one vase a procession entering 
a temple was depicted showing one hundred and fifty 
people, each face wonderful in outline and expression, 
each dress magnificently coloured, and so distinctly 
painted that the silk cord fastening the obi was clearly 
visible on many. The eyesight of these Satsuma artists, 
I fear, is short lived ; a few years is about the limit of 
time that those delicate organs can withstand the strain. 
To see them bending double over their work — the 
vase or whatever is being painted being fixed in position 
on a stool — is wonderful, small children running from 
one artist to another carrying or mixing fresh paints. 
Their paints also are different to those used in other 
countries ; they are mostly ground into powder and 
slowly mixed with water, some few being used with a 
small amount of gum-arabic. 

Satsuma painting was at its height in the first half 



44 THE ART OF JAPAN 

of the last century when the most exquisite works were 
executed. Every museum in Europe, and in fact every 
private collection, boasts of numerous pieces oi Satsuma 
crackled ware, all bound to be genuine because they 
have been collected by experts and high prices paid for 
them. The higher the price paid or demanded, the 
more likely (according to the collector) is the article to 
be genuine. An American will pay hundreds of pounds 
(a mere nothing to him) for a piece of Satsuma merely 
because the clever Japanese salesman has it wrapped in 
paper, linen, cotton wool, and innumerable boxes lest 
such a valuable article should be broken. He is 
duped into buying an apparent imitation because it is 
so expensive. 

To give a personal illustration, I purchased a very 
neat set of picnic utensils in Japan, an imitation of 
the Nankin china so many people rave about, each 
article fitted one inside the other, and the whole was 
contained in a small wooden box with sliding front. 
I was showing a dealer (one of the biggest in England) 
my collection, and produced this thing which had cost 
i-^ yen (3s.), as the piece de resistance, the most price- 
less treasure in my collection. The connoisseur 
handled it as he would a baby, turned it over and 
over, remarked on the beauty of the blue, said it was 



DAMASCENE 45 

priceless, and even named a fabulous figure (not for 
purchase) ; and when I told him it had only cost three 
shillings and was an imitation, he said he thought it 
was, but feared to offend me. Thus man is duped. 

The damascene work is another great industry of 
the country, and is best carried on at Kioto. It con- 
sists of the finest gold threads worked into other 
metals. The vessel is bronze or iron, and after the 
image has been drawn on it, the lines are engraved 
upon the metal with a sharp engraving tool in a dovetail 
form, and then the incisions are filled with fine gold 
wires. The industry is of great antiquity, and was 
practised in Rome many centuries ago ; shields were 
then produced with wars depicted on them in gold and 
silver. The most intricate work is by this means 
accomplished in Japan. Cases of gun-metal watches 
receive beautifully worked patterns or initials in gold 
and silver. At first the manufactured article appears 
rough, the gold wire protruding too far from the 
incisions, but soon, with a small emery wheel, the gold 
is filed down and polished until the whole is an even 
surface. 

I saw a small temple, not more than a few inches 
high, having the finishing touches applied ; it had 
taken the damascene workers twenty years to com- 



46 THE ART OF JAPAN 

plete. The whole was a most wonderful work of art, 
everything correct in every detail, exactly resembling 
one of the chief Shinto temples at Nikko. 

Kioto is the chief town for the manufacture of 
works of art, priceless bronzes, wood carvings so 
magnificently coloured as to resemble the works of 
the finest clay workers. The modern carvings, how- 
ever, cannot, though still beautiful to our eyes, be 
compared with some of the carvings of former cen- 
turies on the temples at Nikko, It is hard to believe 
that carvings such as one sees there can be the work of 
human hands. At one temple the carving is so deep 
that birds are depicted life size, one peacock, I remem- 
ber, at the temple of Yakushi standing out from the 
background with his tail forming the most perfect fan, 
each feather exactly carved, the neck craning forward 
as if ready to pick up food ; the depth of the carving 
from the beak of the bird to the background was 
8^ inches. Other smaller birds, standing on a ledge 
or perched on a branch, surrounded the centre piece, 
and all most beautifully coloured. 

At Kioto also are to be seen some of the finest 
embroideries in Japan, embroideries so soft in colour, 
the patterns so fantastic and weird in form, but still 
each one artistic ; it is seldom that the most critical 



CLOISONNE 47 

can find fault with either the colouring or the design. 
Kimonos are made for the European market, but even 
in these they have not lost that taste of colour which 
is so characteristic of the country ; in this one branch of 
their manufactures they have not deteriorated to such 
an extent to please the — may I call it — bad taste of the 
western countries. The Americans, I believe, are 
chiefly responsible for the decline of Japanese art. 
They require — and unless they obtain it, will not buy 
these tawdry articles — a brilliant clash of colouring ; 
the more auffallend — conspicuous hardly describes it — 
the colours, the better they are pleased. So far even 
has their art degraded in the past few years that one 
is shown an article, palpably, from the very in- 
consistency of its colouring, a modern piece of 
manufacture, and told it is hundreds of years old ; 
they will even go so far as to guarantee its age and 
antiquity by offering written proof showing the temple 
or noble's house from which it has been unearthed. 

Another great industry worth mentioning is the 
cloisonni^ of which Kioto is again the home. It is very 
much older than the Satsuma work, though, until last 
century, was never carried to any great pitch of per- 
fection. It has, through the patience and energy of 
the people, been brought to an absolute art. It is a 



48 THE ART OF JAPAN 

kind of mosaic, but instead of differently coloured 
stones being inlaid to form a pattern or design, the 
metal it is desired to treat receives first a network of 
wires soldered on to the solid frame, and then these 
cells are filled up with enamel paste and permitted to 
dry by being baked several times. When the baking 
operations are complete, it is rubbed down several 
times until the whole is a polished surface. The 
colours are at times so carefully chosen that they seem 
to run into one another, the wires disappear, and the 
whole looks like one piece of colouring. 

What to my mind is the finest of all arts, I have 
left till the last. It is better carried out in Japan 
than in any other country, namely, the gold and cherry 
lacquer work. No other country can compete with 
them in this branch of industry. The dampness of 
the atmosphere is essential to it, and that they have, 
and so have we, but what we have not, and probably 
never will have, is sufficient patience. Time with us 
is too vakiable, and the article becomes too expensive 
for trade purposes. 

The article is lacquered over time after time, some- 
times twenty times or more, but owing to labour being 
so cheap in Japan the finished piece of work can be 
put on the market four times as cheap as if it had been 



LACQUER WORK 49 

done in Europe, and, I am bound to say, four times as 
well done. A native who does this lacquer work — 
nearly always a skilled workman, and certainly an 
artist in the truest sense of the word — gets paid at the 
rate of from 6d. to is. a day, whilst in this country he 
would get anything from 40s. to 50s. a week. This 
is the main reason why works of art cannot be manu- 
factured here. The demand is so great and labour 
so dear that machinery must be used to do the 
work that human hands, with brains and artistic minds 
behind them, accomplish in Japan. Does it not 
stand to reason that an artist must be able to manu- 
facture something more graceful, more natural, and 
beautiful than a machine can, no matter how wonder- 
fully constructed that machine is or what amount of 
mechanism it displays ? A machine accomplishes the 
same work, theoretically, as a modern workman, and 
turns it out probably neater, certainly more exact and 
symmetrical, and without a doubt much cheaper, but 
then I contend that few workmen have any soul in 
what they are doing. Take the ordinary routine of a 
cabinetmaker's workshop. The hands come probably 
at eight, and are obliged to register the time of their 
arrival. That in itself must destroy any particle of 
love they may have for their work. Each man is 



50 THE ART OF JAPAN 

given a certain portion of some larger work to plane 
or cut, all, of course, according to measurements ; he 
probably does not even know for what he is making 
it, whether for a chair or table. Where then can his 
interest come in ? Ask any of these men whether they 
like the work, and the answer is always the same : 
" It's as good as anything else." What is the result 
bound to be ? That several dozens of chairs or tables 
— they may all be artistic — are manufactured, placed 
on the market, and sold at an enormous profit ; there 
has only been one mind at work, one brain, one artist 
— the designer. To him all the credit is due, though 
he gets very little of it. The man who gets credit and 
profit is the financier, though he may not know the 
difference between pine and mahogany. This Croesus 
gets everything, and people come to his store because 
he has an underpaid designer who is the artist, and 
overpaid fools of workmen whose only idea in life is 
to get their work done as quickly as possible and go, 
never to think of it again until necessity forces them 
to do so next morning. The workmen are not to be 
blamed individually or as a class, for the lack of in- 
terest they take in their work : the financier cannot be 
blamed for his endeavour to make as much money as 
possible, and pay wages according to prices fixed by 



THE WORKMEN 51 

trades unions. It is the system alone that is at fault 
in this particular instance of cabinet manufacture, the 
system of giving each man, perhaps for weeks or 
months, only one portion of an article to manufacture. 
That must kill any artistic feeling he may have had, 
because, being possibly a lover of art, his hands are not 
allowed to accomplish what his brain fashions. It is 
the same throughout nature ; stifle a feeling, crush 
with slavery the imaginations of a brain, and you 
destroy the soul. 

" There is in every human breast 
A feeling bordering on unrest, 

On incompleteness : 
Yearnings that cannot be defined, 
Yet live to rob each mortal mind 

Of half its sweetness." 

In every human heart there must be some feeling 
of incompleteness, some yearning no matter what, a 
hope, a craving, and if that feeling is not given breath 
to live, if it is hampered and forced to lie dormant, 
it becomes by slow degrees a nonentity. But give that 
feeling scope to grow, feed it, encourage it, and it is 
bound to blossom forth and bear fruit. 

Look at the hundreds of hard-working, poverty- 
stricken artists who, provided they could get that 



52 THE ART OF JAPAN 

encouragement, would give out to the world in many 
cases work worthy of the name of art. Their ideas 
are cramped, hemmed in on all sides, probably because 
they are poor, and so unable to snap their fingers at 
the wholesale buyers, whose demand is for the mass 
and not for the lovers of art. Let each man work out 
his own ideas however crude at first. If in the end he 
is successful he is satisfied, the yearnings of his heart 
are stilled, the empty spot in his life is filled. Only 
the most persevering can survive the many years of 
discouragement. To every man is given a particular 
talent. In some it is more easily developed than in 
others. It is sometimes called a hobby, and only by 
indulging that hobby can a satisfactory end be attained. 
Glance for a moment at Japan, and see how dif- 
ferent their methods are. Go into a shop where 
articles of furniture are made, or where wood is 
carved ; each man sits before his panel of wood on 
which, perhaps, a design is already drawn : in many 
cases he is even allowed to do that himself, his own 
imagination is permitted to do what with us only a 
paid designer is thought capable of doing. What is 
the result .? No imitation ; each piece of work dif- 
ferent because no two minds are alike. In every 
piece of work one can trace originality, and only 




^1 



~-A 



ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 53 

because each man is allowed to do that which his soul 
yearns to do. That is one reason why the man of 
poorest and humblest parentage can in Japan rise to 
something higher than the mere labourer or workman. 
Each man works to attain an end, the highest end it 
is given a man to aspire to, what his soul asks for — 
the indulgence of the soul's craving. 

A man's heart will soon become bitter if it is 
trampled on ; but give it breath and freedom to work 
its own way, and that man is worthy of envy, his life 
is happy, his thoughts have no chance of becoming 
degraded, his soul is in his work, he lives. And so 
all the workmen of Japan, even if born in the lowest 
station of life, are given a chance, if they wish to 
avail themselves of it. 

I have attempted in this chapter to give you an 
idea of the art of Japan. Though when one comes to 
analyse the word, or attempts to define it, it appears 
deficient, and, by itself, does not express to the 
mind all the soul feels. Art, as I have attempted to 
depict it, is the expression of the soul — those senti- 
ments of taste which, through the medium of colour, 
form, rhythm, and the beauties of nature, appeal to 
the mind, and assist in filling a void in the life of 
a man of artistic temperament. Art in its more 



54 THE ART OF JAPAN 

extended meaning may embrace almost anything, but I 
have merely attempted to bring it within the narrower 
scope of its meaning. 

Every man may have different ideas of art itself, 
and what is artistic, and therefore it must be left 
to his own discretion to apply the term to suit 
his own taste, but still, whatever meaning he may 
attribute to the word, or however he may wish to 
define it, he will probably find that it is something 
that appeals in varying degrees to that portion of his 
mind from which artistic feelings emanate, the answer 
from his soul that a certain craving of his heart is 
satisfied. 



CHAPTER III 

THE PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

In no country in the world do a people or a country 
appeal to one's feelings as they do in the land of the 
" Rising Sun " — Dai Nippon, as it is called in their 
own language. Go anywhere in that country ; see 
everything ; study the people, their habits, customs, 
and modes of living ; try and find fault with either 
the one or the other ; go there even with a pre- 
judiced mind, one that is resolved to find fault, 
and that resolution will be upset ; the prejudice 
against both will be altered. Such is Japan — a land 
not only of flowers, scenery, and gardens which in 
their beauty surpass the imagination of man, but a 
land also of people with whom few can cope, no 
matter in what. 

The people from their birth are taught certain 
things which will be of use to them later. If a father 
is a farmer or artisan his children are taught to follow 
in his footsteps, so that when they have reached a 



56 PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

certain age they can help him. Whatever industry or 
manufacture a man has embraced, to that work also 
is his son brought up, and so he learns it with a 
thoroughness one misses in other nations. A girl, on 
the other hand, is taught to take care of her younger 
brothers and sisters, to mind the house, or assist in 
watering or manuring the fields. She learns that so 
long as she remains young it is her duty towards her- 
self and society to look beautiful, to dress in costumes 
which are becoming, to wear her hair neatly rolled. 
She is the person to fascinate the guests, whether by 
her politeness or by her looks. She must in herself 
be a picture ; her dress must be of such a colour as 
not to clash with her surroundings, and her talk of 
such a kind as to interest her hearers. 

In the Japanese dress there are few fashions : one 
year the obi may be worn broader, or tied in a bigger 
bow, but the cut of the kimono is always the same. 
Possibly, too, one year might see the dresses slightly 
longer than the last, or find the geta^ or wooden 
clogs, rather higher than usual. The benefits derived 
from this lack of change in the fashions of their 
dress are numerous. The silk is usually so heavy, 
and of such good quality, that it will last for years, 
and will probably be handed down from one genera- 



JAPANESE DRESS 57 

tion to another, so that, with a few slight alterations, 
it can be made to fit almost any one. The Japanese 
do not, consequently, consider it extravagant to pay 
sometimes exorbitant sums for their kimonos^ because 
the economy is obvious when the same dress can be 
worn year after year. 

Though fashions do not change, the dresses of people 
holding different social positions may do so. It may 
be customary for a lady in society to wear one gold 
lacquer comb in her hair and three large pins, and 
to have her obi tied at the back. On the other hand, 
the lady who lives in the Yoshiwara at Tokyo, or 
at other similar institutions throughout the land, has 
her sash tied in front and her hair one mass of pins. 
Beware, reader, that in your innocence you do not 
copy the head-dress or kimono from photos you may 
see in albums or on fans or screens, because they nearly 
always represent the costumes of those frail creatures 
of easy virtue ! 

The social position which a Japanese woman held 
in time past was very small. She was looked upon 
as a nonentity in the house, was scarcely even per- 
mitted to express an opinion ; dominated by a tyrant 
of a mother-in-law, who would beat her if she thought 
her son was not receiving sufficient attention and care ; 



58 PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

completely under the control of a husband she was 
perhaps forced to marry against her will, who could 
divorce her for the most trivial offence, and against 
whom she could get little satisfaction, is it any 
wonder that she used so often to have recourse to 
suicide ? Anything seemed to her preferable to that 
life of slavery, and to being the mere tool of her 
husband. Gradually and by very slow stages civilisa- 
tion has taught women the power of resisting the 
humiliation to which they were formerly subjected, so 
that now their position — though by no means an envi- 
able one — has very much improved. At times in the 
leading society of Tokyo they dine with their hus- 
bands when a dinner party is given. Think of the 
treat ! Formerly such a thing would have been con- 
sidered impossible. The greatest honour which could 
have been bestowed on them before would have been 
a permission to appear after dinner, like a child who 
is allowed to come in with the dessert. 

The same rules that apply to children in Europe ap- 
plied to women in Japan ; they should be seen and not 
heard ; beyond the mere fact that they might brighten 
a room with their " presence " they were hardly deemed 
worthy of notice. In proof of this assertion the 
married women until a few years ago used to blacken 



SOCIAL STATUS 59 

their teeth with enamel so as to look ugly in the eyes 
of all but their husbands, who were supposed to have 
the image of their former charms still engraved in their 
memories. The custom became out of fashion when 
the present Empress ceased to disfigure herself in that 
way, and now only a few women in the smaller places 
inland continue to do so. 

The position which a Japanese woman holds in a 
family is very different to that held by women in 
European countries. The relative worth of man and 
woman has never amongst Occidentals been so far 
apart as in the East. It is certain that the modern 
woman of Europe is becoming every year more eman- 
cipated. She is imitating, and with success too, the 
male sex, donning to a great extent his dress, showing 
him that she is no longer going to be tyrannised over 
as in former years. In France a wife helps her husband 
in his business, in England she seeks work of her own, 
and in Germany she still remains the good Hausfrau 
whose sole care is to look after the children, and make 
good Kuchenzetiel. At needlework she is excellent, 
and her cooking capabilities make her husband happy. 

What the Japanese woman is taught and learns to 
perfection is obedience to her parents or her brothers 
— if they stand in the position of head of the family — 



60 PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

until she marries. With marriage everything is 
changed. She leaves her home absolutely, and be- 
comes a member of her husband's family. Her 
parents no longer have any authority over her ; she 
owes them no obedience or even filial affection, but, 
instead, she owes it to her parents-in-law. In place, 
therefore, of a son having to do battle with, and 
(possibly) succumb to the tyranny of a mother-in- 
law, his wife is subservient to those members of her 
husband's family under whose authority it is her 
misfortune to fall. 

The marriage is arranged, not by the people who 
are to live together in matrimony, nor yet, as a rule, 
by their respective parents, but by the semi-official 
" middleman," who is called the nakodo. He is a 
friend of both parties, and negotiates for their mutual 
advantage. It is his task to introduce the young 
couple, and by his decision they are forced to abide, 
provided the parents on both sides consider his ruling 
beneficial to the contracting parties. This " love 
match" is then what the Germans would term eine 
gute Partie — we have no adequate rendering, I am 
glad to say — one that is beneficial, not necessarily 
to the lovers, but to the family from which they 
come — a rich girl, perhaps, with a titled man, the 



DIVORCE 61 

equivalent of the English lord and the almighty 
dollar. 

If a father is too indulgent to a girl during her 
childhood, she must necessarily suffer when she 
marries, and is forced by the law of the country 
to obey her husband. The husband rules the wife 
even as the father rules the family. According to the 
old rules of divorce, it is as easy to divorce your wife 
as to marry her. If she fails to cook the food well, 
to mind the children, or see that her husband is well 
cared for, he can, without the slightest trouble, 
divorce her when he gets tired of her. The converse 
does not hold good ; she cannot divorce him on the 
same grounds. Among the better classes he does 
not do so, because society does not forbid him to 
have as many mistresses as he likes. Though the law 
has attempted to do away with concubinage, he can 
put his legal wife on the shelf and take another. 
The main object of concubinage, which was legal up 
to within a few years ago, was the desire of every 
father to have a son who could carry on the family 
name. He might not care to divorce his wife on the 
ground of her inability to give birth to a boy, and 
so was permitted, often with the wife's consent, to 
take a No. 2, and so do away with the necessity of 



62 PEOPLE AND THEIU HOMES 

adopting a male. The wife still remained his " better 
half," and if a son was born to him by his second 
wife, the child was taught to look upon the first as 
the mother, and the second merely as a nurse. Their 
motto in this respect was that " necessity is the mother 
of invention." Among the poorer people divorce is 
much more common. The wife is merely the tool 
of her husband, and as such is subservient to him — 
in fact his slave. When the husband entertains his 
friends the wife remains upstairs or in the kitchen, 
or, if she is permitted to take part at the festivity, 
remains in the background a sort of ornament, but 
one ready to spring into activity when her lord and 
master desires it, and to entertain her husband's guests 
with her conversation. 

It is interesting to read what Will Adams, the 
first Englishman to land in Japan, wrote in one of 
his letters about the people. These are his own 
words, written about 1 6 1 2 to a friend in England : 
"The people of this Hand of lapon are good of 
nature, curteous above measure, and valiant in warre : 
their iustice is seuerely executed without any par- 
tialitie vpon transgressors of the law. They are 
gouerned in great ciuilitie, I meane not a land 
better gouerned in the world by ciuill policie. The 



SUICIDE 63 

people be verie superstitious in their religion, and 
are of diuers opinions. There be many Jesuites 
and Franciscan friars in this land, and they haue 
conuerted many to be Christians and haue many 
churches in the Hand." The writer seems to have 
summed up the qualities of the Japanese admir- 
ably in those few words "good of nature, cour- 
teous above measure, and valiant in war." 

One more word before I pass from woman to 
the man to whom she is subordinate, and that 
is to mention the shinju^ the natural consequence 
of a manage de convenance. Shinju is the name 
given to a dual suicide of persons of opposite sex. 
A boy and a girl — for they are seldom more than 
sixteen or eighteen — who are not permitted to 
marry because the meddlesome nakodo fixes it other- 
wise, end their lives in one last embrace, either by 
taking poison, or by the man stabbing the girl he 
loves and then himself. In that way deprived of 
the happiness of matrimony, they seek relief in 
death. 

Women being subservient to men, more can be 
written about the latter ; they have also under- 
gone more changes than their more interesting 
fellow-beings. Let me begin at the bottom by 



64 PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

mentioning the street-sweepers — not as we under- 
stand them, armed with brooms, hose, or " dust " 
pans, but shouldering a bamboo stick with a sharp 
point. This road-sweeper superseded the eta^ a man 
who was considered too vile to be reckoned worthy- 
even of notice in the census. The eta were grave- 
diggers, scavengers, loiterers, the scum of the earth, 
hardly deserving the name of man ; loathed by 
their fellow-creatures as beneath contempt, touchers 
of dead bodies, and persons who had no rights at 
all. The official street-sweeper of to-day — though 
still the lowest of the low — is treated as a living 
creature, and is honoured by being included as a 
" man " in the census. We should consider him 
rather a boon in a city like London ; but then, 
opinions differ. His vocation is to wander round 
the towns collecting the paper that is lying about, 
emptying the dust-boxes which are placed outside 
of the houses every morning, and generally cleaning 
the streets. He is undertaker and grave-digger in 
one ; but now he may by hard work aspire to 
something higher, and has an equal chance with the 
rest of mankind of rising to a position in the social 
world of Japan. 

The various grades amongst the Japanese are so 



THE SHIZOKU 65 

numerous that it is impossible to give many of 
them in detail, and so I have thought it best to 
divide them into the lower classes and the shizoku^ 
or civilian — a term given to a man we should call 
a gentleman. The shizoku include all, from the 
middle upper class to the samurai and daimyos of 
former times. The daimyos were the old feudal 
lords, and not by any means the only aristocracy 
in Japan. Apart from them the emperor had his 
own followers, members of the royal house. Origin- 
ally these daimyos were soldiers, and held most of 
the land in the country. They were extremely 
proud of the position they held, carried two swords, 
and walked something like a German infantry soldier. 
Gradually they became extinct, and gave place to the 
samurai^ who were also military men and the squires 
of Japan. From the samurai the shizoku took their 
rise, and now all the better class men are reckoned 
under that denomination. 

The characteristics of the Japanese are their ab- 
solutely black, straight hair — seldom is it possible 
to see one with fair or curly locks, though sake 
soakers are said to have red hair — their eyes, which 
are slightly oblique, as is the case with most of the 
Mongolian races, and their bodies long in comparison 



60 PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

with their legs. The reason of this is probably due 
to the fact that they always squat on their heels, 
and never sit on a chair. Amongst men who live 
an outdoor life — farmers, coolies, and labourers — 
this deformity is not so noticeable, because their legs 
are given more chance of growing. In stature the 
men are seldom much over 5 feet 4 inches — about 
the height of the average European women — and 
the women in comparison mere dolls. 

The costume worn by the shizoku is extremely 
plain and neat, and varies only from the kimonos of 
the women in the differences of colour and cut. The 
chief article of dress is the kimono^ which for a man is 
made of striped grey silk, and for a woman of any 
colour that may take her fancy. It is fastened from 
left to right, and held in place by a girdle, the obi. 
Below this is an under-dress also the shape of a kitnono^ 
but shorter, and usually of white silk, showing an 
edge about half-an-inch broad at the neck and breast. 
Over all, when they walk out, comes a kind of Inver- 
ness cape, called the haori^ made mostly of black or 
grey silk, and on which the crest of the wearer is 
worked in white silk ; this is fastened loosely in front 
with white silk cords tied in a sailor's knot. Their 
feet are clad in thick socks, called iabi^ with a separate 



CLOTHING 67 

place for the big toe, reaching only just above the 
ankles. When in their houses they seldom wear 
shoes, but if they do, they use zori^ straw sandals 
with a thong stretched from the front and attached to 
each side, forming the letter V ; this fits in between 
the big toe and rest of the foot, and enables them to 
retain the sandals. When they go out they put on 
wooden clogs, with bars of wood about two inches 
high at the bottom, called geta^ which keep their feet 
out of the mud and rain. The shizoku generally 
carry a fan, which fixes into their girdle, and is 
made of mulberry paper stretched tightly across 
narrow strips of bamboo. The Japanese are sup- 
posed to be the originators of the ogi^ as this folding 
fan is called. The old legend is, that a priestess 
cured a sufferer from fever in a temple by fanning 
him, and she is supposed to have been the inventor. 
Besides the fan they carry a necessaire^ called netsuke, 
in which they keep all the paraphernalia necessary for 
a smoker, as pipe, tobacco, matches, and cigarettes. 
We have not yet finished with everything appertaining 
to the dress, though this last has almost gone out of 
fashion — the in-ro, or medicine-chest, made of gold 
lacquer or carved red lacquer wood. It consists of 
numerous small compartments joined by a cord which 



68 PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

passes through each, and holds court-plaster (or its 
equivalent), smelling-salts, and the gentleman's seal. 

The men carry small sticks when the weather is 
fine, and umbrellas (almost the most picturesque thing 
in Japan) when it is wet. Unlike Mrs. Gamp's, or 
the more elegant article manufactured in St. Jam.es's 
Street, the Japanese umbrella is made of oiled paper, 
thick and yellow, and so large as almost to hide the 
person of the man who uses it. It is fascinating 
beyond description to see perhaps two little maids clad 
in bright-coloured silk toddling along on their wooden 
geta under one of these yellow umbrellas ; or to see, 
on a warm summer's day, O Ainosuki San in her 
light-coloured kimono^ smiling or giggling with her 
companion, O Kiku San, under paper sunshades, the 
delight of the English fireplace ! Why is it that 
people in Europe delight in misusing things ^. They 
plaster Japanese fans all over their walls, fill their fire- 
places with sunshades designed for another purpose, 
use sake cups for ash-trays, crowd their walls with 
swords, daggers, or assegais, and then consider their 
rooms artistic. Not even content with misusing 
another nation's goods, and feeling ashamed of their 
profanity, the Europeans delight in it, and show ofl- 
Japanese collections to natives with a feeling of pride 



SUNSHADES 69 

at their artistic skill in using them for what they 
were never intended. It is lucky that Japan is so far 
off, and that the greater bulk of the people cannot see 
the ignominy to which their wares are subjected. 

From the foregoing description it may be thought 
that everything is perfect there, and that Japan does 
not bear a share of the world's crimes, but that is not 
so. There are robbers in Japan as in Europe, mur- 
derers, blackguards, liars, filchers, every corrupt man 
it is possible to name, except swearers ; that they leave 
to the Chinese, not from any idea that it is wrong, but 
because their language does not possess any swear- 
words. Unhappy land that cannot give vent to its 
feelings ; but yet its people seem to have picked up 
sufficient English to make up for any deficiency in 
that respect they may have ever felt. Now they can 
curse as lustily as any navvy, and in his language too. 

The Japanese are ready to imitate us in anything 
they consider advantageous to themselves. Ill-content 
with their own artistic costume, the women take to 
skirts, blouses, and, worst of all, to that inexpressible 
garment which keeps the bodice in shape and makes 
the figure unnatural ! The men prefer trousers and 
coat to a loose kimono^ and, since civilisation has visited 
them, cover their heads with all manner of European 



70 PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

hats, from a peak cap to a " Homburg hat." If they 
contented themselves with wearing hats only when 
dressed in trousers and coat, it would not matter, 
but they wear them also when clothed in a kimono. 
It is amusing to see the Japanese men in frock- 
coats and top hats, proudly walking along in Tokyo 
at garden parties, and their wives in Parisian frocks and 
toques. It all seems so out of place. It is, however, 
not fair to judge Japan by remaining in the towns. 
There they do ape the European as much as they can, 
and not only in dress and manners, but also in their 
houses and modes of living. 

The larger towns are built in streets and rows 
of European houses, enormous stone and brick 
mansions, in the place of their diminutive maisonettes. 
Yokohama can now boast of hundreds of jerry-built 
houses exactly similar to our own and to one another. 
It seems a pity that Japan should have been visited by 
us, and borrowed our ideas just at a time when we 
were probably less artistic than we have been for 
some time, and when our architecture is more com- 
monplace (I am referring to the rows of red brick 
houses which are built in a few weeks) than it has 
been for years. Whilst they were instituting new 
methods, it is a pity that they did not go back 



THE HOUSES 71 

further for their models, and copy th^ architecture 
of the Renaissance. 

Their own native buildings can hardly be called 
artistic as a whole. A bird's-eye view of a Japanese 
town is extremely ugly. There are no towers or 
church steeples to relieve the monotony of the flat, 
even appearance of all the roofs. But if the outsides 
are ugly, that ugliness is amply compensated for by 
the artistic taste displayed in the interior. 

Go into a house of any size in Japan, go in the 
evening after the inhabitants have returned home from 
the labours of the day. Enter one of those houses 
and see the life there ; no matter how poor the people 
are or how old and infirm, the picture is nearly always 
the same. You enter a room perhaps only a few 
feet across, but covered with mats rather over two 
inches thick, all of the same size and scrupulously 
clean. In the centre of the room stands the 
hibachij a jar resembling a flower-pot made of 
metal and filled with red-hot charcoal. Stuck into 
the burning embers are several metal chopsticks, 
with which they poke the fire or use for lifting out 
pieces of charcoal to light their pipes. Around 
this fireplace the whole family sit, the men smoking 
their peculiar small pipes, which only hold enough 



72 PEOPLE AND THEIE HOMES 

tobacco for about two whiffs, or inhaling their cigar- 
ettes, the women following their example or embroi- 
dering. In one corner a member of the family may 
be finishing some part of his daily work ; in another 
the youngest member of the house is asleep in its 
kimotw of thickly quilted tabric, unconscious of the 
sounds of voices and merry laughter from the other 
inmates of the room. Is not that room a paradise to 
what you are accustomed to amongst people of the 
same standing in your own countries. Take note 
how hard it is to find anything in that room to offend 
the eye. There is no furniture to fill the room with 
its ugly bulkiness, no cane-bottomed or bottomless 
chairs to trip over, no pictures in gilded frames to 
attract your attention. There is nothing but these 
few people squatting on their heels around the fire, 
and one — seldom more — Likemono^ hung artistically 
on the wall, and possibly a vase of some blossom that 
may happen to be in flower. These people, though 
they are ill-fed, hard worked, and poor even beyond 
our conception of poverty (the whole family has about 
6d. a day to live on), are happy. There is no dis- 
contented look on their faces, or noisy brawling and 
drunken oaths. They live in peace. 

in the interior of Japan, of course, everything is 



"CHAYA" 73 

extremely primitive still. The tea-houses, chaya as 
they are called, boast neither table nor chair as a 
rule, but when a stranger comes they are procured 
if wanted from the neighbouring police-station — the 
regular plain unpolished deal table and cane chairs. 
The floors are much more comfortable, and it re- 
quires but little practice to become efficient in the art 
of sitting on one's heels or tailor fashion. 

The delight of living in a tea-house may not from 
the foregoing and subsequent description appeal to a 
Westerner who has never been to Japan ; but take it 
from me it is absolutely fascinating, and the more one 
sees of them and the less one comes in contact with 
European hotels there the better one is pleased. 
Everybody after a hard day's walk must know how 
pleasant it is to receive the attention of one of the 
fair sex, and so the first person to meet you on arrival 
at one of these chaya is a little mousme^ the daintiest 
little person you can imagine. She is dressed with 
scrupulous neatness, her kimono gathered up just 
over her feet to facilitate her walking about, and kept 
in place by the large ohi — which in the female attire 
is much broader than in the men's — tied at the 
back and forming a large bow (the Japanese bustle) ; 
her hair jet black and neatly arranged with combs and 



74 PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

pins — the use of small fans in the hair is a European 
invention — her feet destitute of shoes. This little 
woman is your servant, the person who shows you 
to your room after she has removed your boots : to 
profane a Japanese dwelling by entering with boots 
or shoes on would be as great an insult to the host 
as it would be to enter the drawing-room of some 
society lady's house in London and walk upon her 
sofa or chairs. One is shown into a room perfect in 
every way. In the middle stands a small cherry 
lacquered table a few inches in height, and after 
O Umo San (Miss Plum) has bidden her guest be 
seated — on the floor — she rushes out to make the 
tea {cha), which is served in small dainty cups, with- 
out handles, of the finest egg-shell china ; with this 
she returns, the whole neatly arranged on a tray 
with cakes and sweetmeats of various descriptions, 
and having deposited her tray, she retires with a 
polite bow. 

Look round that room and try and find fault with 
either the room as a whole or with any individual 
thing ; it is impossible, because that room is artisti- 
cally empty — if such a term can be applied to empti- 
ness. There is nothing to off^end the most critical ; 
nothing to be seen in fact, except the usual kakemono 



"FUTON MOTTE KOI" 75 

hanging from the paper wall, one bronze pot of 
blossoms arranged only as the Japanese know how, 
and, if the weather is cold, one or two hihachi to 
warm your hands. Beyond those few things the 
room is empty, and in that emptiness lies the whole 
charm of a Japanese dwelling. Slide back the parti- 
tion which divides your room from the neighbouring 
one and you will see the same neatness, the same 
cleanliness and white mats, the only difference being 
another kakemono and, according to its colour, other 
flowers. 

Bedtime at 9 p.m., or even earlier, seems to one 
rather ludicrous ; but yet that is their custom, and 
by that one must abide. Considering that the 
august stranger is only permitted one room in which 
to eat, drink, rest, joke, and sleep, this custom may 
not seem so out of place ; because if the mousme has 
many sitting-rooms to transform into bedrooms it 
may take time to effect that change. " Futon motte 
koi^"" you call out if you are anxious to go to bed, 
and the little servant will toddle into the room laden 
with quilts so that her small body is absolutely hidden 
from sight. The thickest quilt is laid on the floor, 
another placed on top of it, and a thinner one rolled 
to form a pillow, which is placed at the head of the 



76 PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

quilts. The Japanese, instead of using a pillow, sub- 
stitute a wooden block, not unlike one of the ancient 
blocks used for beheading people, hollowed out 
slightly in the centre to fit the nape of the neck, 
and covered over with felt. This pillow is called 
makura^ and he who can avoid using it had better 
do so ; it is not intended for an Occidental's neck, 
but is extremely useful to the women of Japan, 
who only take their hair down about every three 
weeks. The only other thing required is the top 
covering for the bed, which is sheet, blanket, and 
eider-down all in one. This is called the yagu^ or top 
quilt, and is in the shape of a kimono of thickly padded 
silk. The mousme, or ne-san^ having assisted her 
guest to undress, and tucked him up with the tender 
care of an old nurse, retires with her good wishes 
for a pleasant night, " O Tasumi nasai^ Here the 
troubles begin. You find, or perhaps only imagine, 
the quilts may not be quite clean ; you fancy some 
friend has told you others have slept in them without 
their undergoing a cleaning ; you already conjure up 
the unpleasant idea of worrying insects, and so, for 
fear of any annoying sensations, you rise again and 
put on more of your own clothes and fewer of those 
the chaya provided. At last slumber seems near, and 



"O YASUMI NASAI" 77 

you look forward to a good night's sleep. But no, 
my friends, though you may be dozing, sleep is yet a 
thing of the future. A man suddenly appears at your 
door, salaaming on the floor, and muttering something 
about a shampoo and head massage. Fancy a vigorous 
shampoo just when sleep seems nearest. Under a 
volley of imprecations the amma-san^ as he is called, at 
length retires, and you hope at last for rest, but you 
are not destined to get it. At about 9.30 or 10 
the boy disturbs you by fixing the shutters in front of 
your window, and so depriving you of air and light. 
With another " O Tasumi nasai " he, too, retires, and 
the house is quiet. Your dreams I cannot describe, 
and my own are too pleasant a reminiscence to 
allow of their being told. When, however, you 
imagine yourself surrounded by little Japanese ladies 
and fancy you hear their gay prattle and merry, 
musical voices — purely imagination of course — you 
are awakened by the most deafening noise imaginable, 
and at about 4 a.m. too! Alarm clocks are sweet 
music to the sounds that reach the sleeper's ears ; 
knocking and " Hot water, sir," is superfluous in this 
land of tranquillity. I defy even Morpheus to sleep 
through that noise, and you discover it to be the Boy 
— spelt with a big B — removing the wooden shutters 



78 PEOPLE AND THEIR HOMES 

and sliding them back into the walls. That's all, but 
it is a terribly sudden awakening whilst it lasts. 
After that sleep is impossible ; busy feet make un- 
earthly sounds around you, hurrying backwards and 
forwards on the wooden boards, and so you consider 
it best to get up and have your nap in the daytime 
instead. It is quite unnecessary to inform the ne-san 
to '"'' Kara hay aku okoshiti kudasai" — to wake you 
early ; they do it in a most unmannerly fashion, 
unbidden. 

There are, of course, tea-houses and tea-houses. 
The first we will call chaya, which are admirably con- 
ducted — except for the few inconveniences I have 
enumerated — and the second we will not mention 
because they are not proper and have no descriptive 
name. When you leave a tea-house you are as much 
pestered with politeness and pretty speeches as when 
you arrive, but for a different reason. When you 
arrive it is to show you hospitality, and when you 
depart to make you more generous with the cha 
(literally tea) money, the Egyptian bakshish every one 
knows about to his annoyance. Your host will pre- 
sent you with a letter of introduction, called annai-jo, 
from himself to the owner of the next inn you wish 
to stay at, recommending you to the other's good 



GOOD-BYE 79 

care ; and so, with many bows, they wish you a " mata 
irashai" — a speedy return — or '■^ sayonara" — good- 
bye — according as you have behaved. 

It is hard to attempt a comparison between 
Japanese and European life. Everything, even the 
very thoughts of the people, works on different lines. 
They do everything exactly opposite to the way we 
do them. They build the roofs of their houses first 
on a plain structure, and then fill in the spaces after- 
wards. They read from right to left, starting at what 
we would call the end of the book ; they write, also, 
from right to left. To watch them making out an 
account is in itself a study ; first the figures, then the 
words, and if you imagine the sum-total will be in a 
certain place on the paper, look at exactly the opposite 
end, because it is certain to be there. Their eyes turn up 
at the corners instead of being straight or turning down. 
They hang up their boots in the hall instead of their 
hats, rub their legs instead of shaking hands, and not 
as in China, where you shake your own hands instead 
of your friends' if you want to say good-day. They 
have dessert and liqueurs before the more staple dishes 
of fish and rice. Men are courted by their wives and 
obeyed by them, not vice versa. Japan is, in fact, a 
land of contradictions. 



CHAPTER IV 

BATHING, PRIVATE AND PUBLIC 

If you reach :i tea-house after a long day's walk 
the inhabitants seem to realise that their guest must 
be tired. At any rate, whether you are or not, certain 
formula? must be gone through unless you are suffi- 
ciently fluent in the language to resist the pressure 
which is brought to bear on you. 

The landlord and his family seem to be here, 
there, and everywhere at once — they run about, shout 
to each other, and whilst the boy is removing your 
dusty boots, the others are preparing the room for 
the honoured stranger. It is almost considered 
an insult to them to remove your own boots. Shoes 
are at once forthcoming and placed on your feet, 
or, if one prefers tahi — a kind of mitten for the 
feet, reaching only as far as the ankle — instead 
of felt slippers, they are there for the mere asking. 
The tabi are extremely useful, because their sandals, 
which are called zori^ have a strap fixed from the 



AT THE TEA-HOUSE 81 

front to the sides into which the toe fits, and keep 
the feet warm. 

This ceremony over, you are shown the visitors* 
room — probably the largest in the house — because the 
Japanese seem to think every European must be 
fabulously wealthy, merely because he has more 
money to spend, or rather spends more money than 
the average native. 

There is never any pause or waiting ; one is 
simply inundated with politeness. Tea is at once 
served on a nice lacquered tray, cakes are brought 
without the necessity of asking for them. The 
ne-san fetches a clean linen kimono for each of her 
guests, and insists on his removing his jacket and 
donning the native dress. 

At last the partition is closed, and a few solitary 
moments of rest seem near. The moments reach 
about five minutes, just long enough to permit one to 
arrange one's thoughts and think of tea, when the 
ne-san again stands bowing at the door, only to say 
that " the contemptible bath is ready and waiting for 
the august stranger to condescend to place himself in 
the water." You are conducted out into the garden 
with much ceremony, and shown a wooden tub about 3 
feet 6 inches high and about 2 feet 6 inches wide. A 



82 BATHING, PHIVATE AND PUBLIC 

closer inspection reveals a small stove at tbe back, 
heated with charcoal, and partly built into the bath. 
You look round and find yourself alone again. The 
water seems a delightful temperature, and alongside 
the tub stands a pump with cold spring water, and 
next to that a small basin with soap and a large wooden 
ladle. All this appears most enchanting, not to say 
romantic. A garden beautifully laid out with shrubs, 
hills, and flowers, a blue sky overhead with birds 
singing, a wooden tub with water of a temperature 
after your own heart, soap and all the accessories of 
the toilet, and a cold pump for the shower. You 
already think what a splendid time you are going to 
enjoy — you think what other nation in the world 
would afford one such a luxury — when you discover 
the absence of a towel. The first thing that suggests 
itself is that the ne-san has forgotten it in her haste. 
You clap your hands to summon the servant and 
inform her of the necessity of a bath sheet, and with 
many apologies she brings a small square foot of 
fine cambric, so fine that it is transparent, wrapped 
round with a band of paper to prove its being clean. 
No matter how tall you are, or what your circum- 
ference may be, one square foot of linen is all they 
can muster. 



THE BATH 83 

You then proceed to divest yourself of clothing, 
and after using the soap and ladling it off with the 
wooden ladle, enter the tub. But, strange ! the water 
appears hotter now than it did before. Lean back, 
look at the sky ; you feel lifted to the seventh 
heaven of bliss. Was there ever such a wonderful 
country .? You sing — it's about the only thing left to 
do — when suddenly your eyes become riveted on 
human beings strolling about the garden. Blushes 
begin to spring into existence, especially as the people 
come closer, and you notice persons of a different sex 
to yourself amongst the number. The water gets 
hotter, and you realise that the stove is still burning 
and you see no chance of extinguishing it. The 
blushes descend from the face downwards, partly 
owing to the increasing temperature of the water, 
which must be getting to some prodigious height, and 
partly due to your sense of modesty. You think 
of your home ; imagine your mother's shocked face 
and your male friends' amusement. You inwardly 
curse Japan and her people for their lack of decency, 
but they appear quite unabashed ; they hardly notice 
you, and then you soliloquise, conjure up vain hopes 
that they cannot remain much longer, that they do not 
really realise the situation you are in, and that as soon 



84 BATHING, PRIVATE AND PUBLIC 

as they properly see your head, their finer feehngs will 
return, and with their return, they will depart with 
many apologies. 

Instead of the seventh heaven of bliss you feel 
nearer Hades. The water gets still hotter, you feel 
yourself inwardly swelling ; your skin, which a few 
moments ago was really only warm, now feels scorched, 
and still the spectators linger on. 

Ultimately, no longer able to bear the torture, 
with a savage yell you jump out and rush for the 
pump. Blushes, modesty, thoughts of home, all dis- 
appear ; you force yourself to believe you have be- 
come callous of the gaze of spectators who, through 
your yells, have been forced to look round, and 
stand there scrutinising you under the pump, not 
knowing whether you are in pain and require help, 
or whether your terrible sounds are a European's 
usual expressions after the joys of a garden bath. 

Your cry of mingled agony and rage has had 
one effect, however, because you see the ne-san run- 
ning across the garden with another square foot of 
towel, with which she proceeds to rub and scrub 
your back, almost removing what small amount of 
flesh still adheres to the bones after boiling. No 
imprecations have the slightest effect ; she does not 



WASHING OPERATIONS 85 

understand them, and in her zeal to do the right 
thing and please the honoured sir, she interprets 
your threats wrongly, and rubs all the harder. 

Whether the Japanese mind works on the same 
lines that dominate an artist's — that everything in 
nature is beautiful — or whether it fails to see 
anything immodest in watching a man perform his 
ablutions, I never discovered. The terrible fact re- 
mains that these people do walk about the garden, 
they do wish you to avail yourself of their services 
and appear hugely interested. Amusement does 
not seem to enter their heads. I suppose their 
theory is that to the pure everything is pure ; an 
unsullied mind covers a multitude of sins. 

After the dressing is complete, and your senses 
(after the severe strain) have become pacified, you 
feel that the remaining spark of modesty has flickered 
out ; but after a few lessons the operation of bath- 
ing, dressing, and being scraped down is performed 
in future without a blush, and taken quite as a 
matter of course. 

I do not wish to suggest that this prehistoric 
performance takes place everywhere in Japan — far 
from it. Only in the smallest inland places, far 
away from the throng of civilised persons, and where 



86 BATHING, PRIVATE AND PUBLIC 

the missionaries have not yet had time to degrade 
the people's minds by teaching them the difference 
between morality and immorality, can this luxury 
— if so it can be termed — be indulged in. In many 
places up-country the baths are even in the open 
street, and continue there until police supervision 
— another introduction of civilisation — puts a stop 
to them. 

Over most parts of the country there are hot 
water springs, always at the same temperature, and, 
in many cases, sulphur springs also. The volcanic 
nature of the country is responsible for these. At 
Atami, a few miles from Miyanoshita, in the Hakone 
district, can be seen a geyser almost as fine as any 
in New Zealand. Water spouts out of the earth at 
times to a height of thirty or forty feet ; whilst at 
Miyanoshita itself the country round is extraordinary. 
One sees in the distance clouds of steam rising from 
the ground, and as one approaches a strong smell 
of sulphur is perceptible. The whole ground appears 
rotten with the outer coating hard, as if a crust 
had formed, and the rocks and crevices in the earth 
at times emit volumes of smoke. Apparently it 
is entirely due to the volcanic nature of the place 
that these thermal baths exist. 



THE SEASON 87 

At Kawara-yu, a small spot close to Ikao, these 
sulphur baths are almost world-renowned. They are 
supposed to practically cure any disease. Hundreds 
of people visit Kawara-yu every summer — when the 
weather there is warm — and indulge in these sul- 
phurous baths. Up to a few years ago the men's 
and women's baths were one and the same. They 
became a sort of Hyde Park in the season ; every 
one used to turn out and bathe there together — 
men, women, and children — quite irrespective of 
sex. The scandal of the day would be discussed, 
and all the various topics of the season enumer- 
ated at length. No one ever dreamt of any 
harm. A European bathing amongst them, though 
treated with respect and politeness, would be 
the centre of an admiring crowd, especially if he 
happened to have fair hair and was tall. Any- 
thing out of the ordinary amuses the Japanese, 
and the fact of being possessed of blue eyes and fair 
hair is quite sufficient to make the fellow-bathers 
stare and even giggle. It is not a pleasant sensation 
to be giggled at — even by a Japanese. 

In winter, when the place is too cold for many 
visitors to stop there, the natives seem to have a 
jovial time, according to their own account. They 



88 BATHIXG, PRIVATE AND PUBLIC 

think nothing of remaining in the bath for a month 
on end and sleep, eat, and drink in the water. It 
is the only way they can keep warm, at a height of 
4000 feet above sea-level, and living as they do in 
primitive houses with wooden partitions and paper 
windows. The children sit in the bath whenever 
they feel cold, and one old man of about seventy is 
(according to hearsay) supposed to remain in his 
watery home the whole winter. 

At Yumoto, in the Nikko district, also several 
thousand feet high, the bathing is much the same, 
though hardly any people remain there during the 
winter months. They leave at the end of October 
and return towards the middle of April. Yumoto 
has of late years become so " respectable " that 
wooden partitions have been placed round the baths, 
dividing them, so that the modesty of Europeans is 
no longer shocked ; but the Japanese, in their de- 
lightful innocence, forgot to build the partition to 
the bottom of the water, and consequently, a good 
under - water swimmer may get somewhat mixed, 
and find himself suddenly emerging on the ladies' 
side, and as few wear anything but the garments 
Dame Nature furnished them with at their birth, 
the result of this sudden apparition may appear 



AN HOTEL BATH 89 

detrimental to the nerves of any European who 
may be enjoying the warmth of the water. 

The Japanese become so used to bathing in water 
over blood heat, that they can with comfort remain 
a long time in a temperature varying from anything 
between lOo" and 120' Fahrenheit. Mr. Basil 
Chamberlain, whose word on anything Japanese can 
generally be taken as authentic, declares that in 
summer the people at these bathing places apolo- 
gise for their uncleanliness ; but say that owing 
to pressure of business they cannot find time for 
more than two baths a day. In the slack season 
five is about the average number. 

Even in hotels in larger towns inland — such as 
Nagoya, where I spent the night — the " tubbing " 
arrangements were primitive. After a good night's 
sleep, I was called and told the bath was prepared 
Thmking that at last I could enjoy my morning tub 
in private, I repaired to the room, and found the 
usual wooden arrangement and all the accessories, 
except the cold pump. A few claps of the hand 
brought the ne-san toddling along, and requesting 
to know what was required. I called for cold water, 
and whilst it was being drawn, thought I might 
just as well sit in the bath as outside and await 



90 BATHING, PRIVATE AND PUBLIC 

its arrival. I had no sooner settled myself com- 
fortably in the warm water, when the door flew 
open without a knock or even a request for per- 
mission to enter, and the ne-san shot the bucket 
of ice-cold water over my head, and then refused 
to go until she had dried me. Sometimes one has 
to use force to get rid of these people, they are 
so persistent in their endeavours to help. 

Cleanliness is about the only thing that the 
Japanese have not derived from China. In that 
they stand out far above the race from whom all 
their other ideas have originated. Their religion — 
the Buddhist branch of it, originally Indian — found 
its way into China, and thence via Korea to Japan. 
So also their art, houses, mode of living, and 
dressing. 

Though the Japanese may seldom, amongst the 
poorer classes, change their kimonos^ which, to out 
ward appearances, look extremely dirty and dusty, 
these inside are probably clean, because their bodies 
are so. Be that as it may, the fact remains that 
a crowd in Japan is sweet smelling in comparison 
to any other crowd it has ever been my misfortune 
to mix with. 

Statistics show that in Tokyo alone there are as 



PUBLIC BATHS 91 

many as 1200 public baths, and that over half a 
million inhabitants bathe there every day. Wash- 
ing forms also part of the ritual of the Shinto re- 
ligion, the purification of the soul by the cleansing 
of the body ; so that, according to them, cleanli- 
ness and godliness walk hand in hand. 



CHAPTER V 
CHILDREN, OLD AND YOUNG 

So much space has been devoted in previous chapters 
to the men and women of Japan, without much men- 
tion being made of their offspring, that I feel a 
chapter devoted to them will not be amiss, especially, 
as Sir Rutherford Alcock wrote, "Japan is a very 
paradise of babies." Always happy and bright, their 
very quarrels are play and tears are scarcely known. 
If a child falls, he gets up again, rubs the injured 
spot, and toddles off to join his playmates. 
Whether the idea of crying never strikes them, or 
whether they become immuned from weeping, I 
don't know, the extraordinary fact remains, the 
children, old or young, never cry. 

A child when he is born is handed over to a 
sister to be taken care of. The mother's task is not 
altogether accomplished when she has given birth to 
her offspring. She makes its little bright-coloured 

kimono, the brighter and gayer it is the greater 

92 



BABIES 93 

chance is the child supposed to have ot growing 
into a healthy person. She shaves its head as soon 
as any hair makes its appearance, leaving only a 
fringe round the forehead and neck and a tuft in 
the centre. There is no limit to the mother's 
imagination in this respect ; she experiments on 
that child's head until she has discovered what she 
considers the most becoming coiffeur^ the artistic skill 
she expends knows no bounds, nothing is too much 
trouble, and no task too arduous. She presents him 
to Hotei, the god of children, one of the seven 
gods of luck ; his jovial, smiling face seems just 
what a child would require for a romp. He is 
the personification of happy contentment. It is 
an astonishing fact that the little mites do not 
tumble downstairs more than they do, clad as 
they are in long kimonos^ and with geta on their 
feet, awkward enough to make any one trip. A 
possible reason is, that in many houses the temptation 
is removed because they have no stairs, but if they 
have, there are never any railings or wooden nursery 
gates to bar their passage. They are the quaintest 
little individuals imaginable. They look as wise as 
aged sages, round-faced, pink-cheeked, with sparkling, 
obliquely-set eyes and shorn heads. It is a common 



94 CHILDREN, OLD AND YOUNG 

sight to see girls of six or seven playing games of tick 
with sleeping babies on their backs, their poor little 
heads jerking about, so that one imagines every moment 
they must drop off. They appear, however, quite 
unconscious of shaking. Frequently it is hard to see 
whether it is a baby or a doll that is strapped to a 
girl's back — they both look alike, an impassive mass 
of flesh in one case, and wood in the other. 

The ceremony of shaving a child's head has given 
rise to an unpleasant disease. In many cases their 
heads appear covered with sores — a form of eczema — 
due probably to the use of an unclean razor. Owing 
to a foolish superstition the parents take no steps 
to cure them, because they fancy the children will 
be healthier in later life if the illness comes out 
when they are young. They attribute it to naughti- 
ness which lurks under the infantile scalp, and con- 
sider this eczema the best means of getting rid of 
it — an outlet for the devil. 

The boys, unlike those of other countries, never 
exhibit the smallest amount of shyness ; if they are in 
the company of grown-up persons, they show them 
all deference, and are good-mannered ; if they are 
amongst foreigners they do not laugh, snigger, or — 
worst of all — stand with their hands deep in their 



THE NEW YEAR 95 

trousers pockets (the natural reason being that they 
have none). They appear interested in what is said, 
and if a foreigner with small knowledge of their 
language tries to converse with them, they attempt 
to help him out of his difficulties without ill- 
mannered mockery. 

The Japanese, both old and young, are holiday 
lovers, and they have as many national holidays prac- 
tically as weeks in the year. Every one turns out, 
be it wet or fine, either to wander en famille through 
their picturesque lanes, admiring the colouring, or to 
sit in front of a show of blossoms. They consider 
it almost a religious duty to make merry on these 
numerous occasions. Not content with one or two 
days in succession, when they celebrate their New 
Year, work ceases for quite two weeks. It heralds 
the time for merry-making, families call on each other, 
exchange presents, and eat a mess they call zoni, made of 
rice cakes and mixed with boiled beans or greens. The 
ladies remain at home to receive their friends, whilst 
the rest of the family wander all day and every day 
from house to house, distributing their small oiFerings. 
It is not unusual for your presents eventually to come 
back, because one lady may receive so many gifts of 
the same kind, that she sends them on to another 



96 CHILDREN, OLD AND YOUNG 

friend with her compliments, and so on, until the 
grantor becomes in turn again the grantee of his 
own gift. Tradesmen, instead of receiving Christ- 
mas-boxes, go their rounds amongst their cus- 
tomers, distributing small presents — a bribe for future 
patronage. 

The children join in all manner of games. The 
whole country is topsy-turvy, and as every child is 
a year old on the ist of January, quite irrespective 
of the month in which he or she was born, he 
thinks it his duty to celebrate his birthday in a be- 
fitting manner. 

When they have finished their first round of calls 
and congratulations, it is time to start again, and so 
on, until the prescribed time of holiday-making is 
over. That, however, is only momentary, because 
though in 1870 the Japanese calendar was changed 
to conform to the European months, they fail to see 
why they should be done out of their real new year 
as opposed to the oifficial New Year, and so, at the 
beginning of February the same thing starts again, 
and men, women, and children — they really all come 
under the last category — consider it their duty to 
celebrate the occasion as their ancestors did. 

These early holidays, however, are only the 







T 



To faae p. 96 



16. VISITING DAY. 



KITE FLYING 97 

prelude to what follows later in the year, and are 
considered more of a religious ceremony than a 
relaxation. It is hard work — according to their 
lights — to go about incessantly from house to house, 
and is considered a duty rather than a form of plea- 
sure or amusement. 

It is absurd to call a person in Japan anything but 
a child, and any one who has seen them flying kites 
will agree with me that a Japanese never seems to 
get beyond the age of childhood. Old men of any 
age (the only limit is such feebleness that they cannot 
stand) can be seen racing about after kites. The sky is 
dotted with the most weird-shaped things imaginable. 
Birds, beasts, serpents, and scorpions, flutter about in 
the wind or get entangled, after which it is a case of 
the survival of the fittest. If two persons have a 
quarrel, which in Germany and France would give 
rise to an interchange of cards, with pistols for two 
and coff^ee for one as a consequence, in Japan they 
do battle with kites, an innocent form of duelling. 
Each combatant will have his kite with his armorial 
bearings, or his monogram, gorgeously painted on it 
in bright colours. The strings are coated over with 
finely powdered glass, or are made of wiry hemp, and 
the battle consists of trying to cut your opponent's 



98 CHILDREN, OLD AND YOUNG 

string, so that his kite, no longer captive, soars aloft 
amidst the shouts of the onlookers. 

After the February New Year celebrations have 
drawn to a close, the country enjoys a period of hard 
work, and with the exception of one or two off-days, 
such as the anniversary of the birth of a saint or death 
of some illustrious being, they put their shoulders to 
the wheel and make up for lost time. The interval 
is of short duration, for on the third day of the third 
month the girls have their outing. Every street in 
every town, and each house in the street, is bedecked 
with dolls ; big dolls and little dolls, some dressed, 
others stripped, round-headed, shorn-headed, pink- 
eyed and black-eyed, china and wooden dolls, sawdust 
and padded dolls, dolls of every description. The 
country teems with them, every girl plays with them. 
To be deprived of her toy would be the greatest known 
punishment on the 3rd of March, and if she cannot 
afford to buy one, she will substitute a baby brother 
or sister so as not to be out of the fun. The shops 
also sell such things as diminutive kitchen and cook- 
ing utensils, to teach the girls the way in which, in 
later years, they are to look after their husbands. 
That day is the merriest day in the year for them. 
They have tea-parties at which they drink a beverage 



JIMMU TENNO 99 

called shiro-zakey made from peach-blossoms soaked in 
water and sweetened with sugar. 

The dolls represent famous people ; all the mem- 
bers of the court are portrayed in miniature ; girls 
search the mythology of their country for some 
legendary personage whose portrait they can imitate. 
Hundreds of Izanagies, Susa-no-o's, and celebrated 
Shoguns, all the Daimyos and Mikados, from Jimmu 
Tenno to the present Emperor, figure as dolls — a 
doubtful compliment to such great people. 

From March the 17th till the 22nd are the festi- 
vals of Higan, when the souls of the departed are 
supposed to cross the Styx in search of their ulti- 
mate goal. Fancy only six days' holiday for the Big 
Children ! 

April the 3rd — after a week of work — is held as 
a bank-holiday on account of the death of the first 
Emperor Jimmu Tenno, who was born about 640 
B.C. Images of this illustrious person are pulled 
round the streets on carts, children follow dressed in 
the quaintest of gaudy costumes, and at night the 
whole cart is illuminated with candles and lanterns, 
the followers forming a befitting procession, armed 
with Japanese lanterns hung on sticks, and setting up 
a continuous howl called music. This is a day on 



100 CHILDREN, OLD AND YOUNG 

which the people get jovially intoxicated ; small stages 
are built all over the country, and the village come- 
dians give an exhibition of their talent, singing, danc- 
ing, and distorting their faces in all manner of terrible 
ways. A sake barrel accompanies the performers, 
and as the row they make is bound to give them dry 
throats, they have not far to go — usually under the 
stage — to quench their thirst. After this they have 
a terribly long spell without pleasure — till the 5th of 
May — four long weary weeks. 

On the fifth day of the fifth month the boys 
have their innings, called Tango no Sekku, when every 
house is bedecked with paper fish hung from long 
bamboo poles. The streets look gay arrayed with 
these huge carp, the larger ones at the top and 
smaller below. There is a fish for every boy in 
the house, but whether each male is only allowed 
one or not, I never gathered. To judge from 
the number of fish — sometimes twelve or more hung 
from one pole — the male population of families must 
be prodigious. The paper fish are hollow with open 
mouths and so are blown about in the wind, the hope 
being that the boys will some day float as bravely up 
the stream of life as the fish do. Some are beauti- 
fully painted and designed ; their silvery scales shining 



"TANGO NO SEKKU" 101 

in the sun. This is, however, only the outward sign 
of the Tango no Sekku or boys' festival. The shops 
all exhibit such wares as bows and arrows, targets, 
swords, and wooden sabres, to remind the boys of 
the implements used by their elders in warfare, and 
of the duties they owe to their country should she 
be at war, just as two months before the girls, by 
their dolls and pans, were reminded of their duties 
in the house, and towards their younger sisters and 
brothers. 

These are recognised holidays, but that does not 
hinder the people from making holiday when such 
shows as the cherry - blossom or chrysanthemum 
festivals are in season. Provided the day is fine, 
every one turns out to enjoy the sights. 

The seventh day of the seventh month witnesses 
a more poetic festival. Bamboo poles are stuck about 
in different places, and strips of paper suspended 
from them, bearing poetical allusions to two con- 
stellations on either side of the Milky Way. The 
story is founded on some fiction of Chinese origin, 
in which, according to Professor Chamberlain, Aquila 
the herdsman is in love with Vega the weaving girl. 
I will quote the Professor's own words : " The weav- 
ing girl was so constantly kept employed in making 



102 CHILDREN, OLD AND YOUNG 

garments for the offspring of the Emperor of Heaven 
— in other words, God — that she had no leisure to 
attend to the adornment of her person. . . . God, 
taking compassion on her loneliness, gave her in 
marriage to the herdsman. . . . Hereupon the woman 
began to grow remiss in her work. God in his anger 
then made her recross the river . . . forbidding her 
husband to visit her more than once a year " — namely, 
on the 7 th of July. This festival is called the Evening 
of Stars, when offerings are made and prayers offered 
up to the two constellations. 

A few days after this the Feast of Lanterns, the 
Bon Matsuri, takes place, also of Chinese origin, when 
the inhabitants go to visit the graves of their ancestors, 
and partake of a feast at the tombs. Chinese crackers 
are fired off, lanterns hung out, and the priests invoke 
the gods by incantations. In China the use of fire- 
works is much more prevalent than in Japan, though 
many of her customs originate from there. In China, 
whenever a boat or junk sets sail down the river, the 
sailors beat a huge gong and rend the air with crackers 
and squibs to drive away the devil. They firmly be- 
lieve that no journey would be propitious unless they 
intimidated the Evil One beforehand. If any pestil- 
ence pervades a city, the officials have strict injunctions 



EBISU'S FESTIVAL 103 

to fire rifles all night to allay the curse that has visited 
them, and reports are made to the Emperor or his 
subordinates next day to say that the dragon or devil 
has decamped or been killed. Such is the superstition 
of the Eastern nations. 

On the ninth day of the ninth month another 
holiday comes round, also based on some Chinese 
legend, when a liquor is drunk made from a labiate 
plant resembling the flower of an antirrhinum, and 
prayers are ofi^ered up to the god of that particular 
flower. 

In October one of the Shichi Fukujin — the seven 
gods of luck — has his day, because he is the only god 
who remains in his own temple instead of wandering off 
to hold a consultation with his brother gods at Izumo. 
His name is Ebisu, and he is generally depicted as 
fully dressed (an exception to what is usual amongst 
the gods), and with a rod, to the end of which a 
koi or carp is attached. This benign person also 
wears a moustache and goatee, and on account of 
his loneliness is particularly honoured in this 
month. 

The holidays are drawing to a close — only one 
more before the year has run its course — which falls 
in the middle of November. It is the day when all 



104 CHILDREN, OLD AND YOUNG 

children of three years' standing cease to have their 
heads shaved. From this age their heads begin to 
heal from the eczema, which must have been a source 
of great discomfort to them and an eyesore to others ; 
and their mothers generally wean them at this time 
too, though sometimes not until the child is five or 
six. Thus ends the year, and after the remaining 
six weeks the people are anxious for New Year to 
come round once again. 

Let my reader not suppose that these " few " 
holidays are the only relaxation the Japanese indulge 
in. Besides having all our games to amuse them, 
they have hundreds of their own. It is extraordinary 
the aptitude they show in becoming efficient at all 
the English sports. At base-ball they can beat 
almost any American team ; a boy will throw the 
ball into the air, and with the most certain accuracy 
drive it an enormous distance. Where they are handi- 
capped is in running, because of their kimonos^ which 
are very apt to trip them up or get between their legs. 
It is rather dangerous to get anywhere near a game of 
base-ball, because they are as apt to play it in an open 
square as anywhere, and an onlooker or passer-by may 
find himself measuring his length on the ground. 
Cricket, football, and polo are indulged in with a 



JUGGLERS 105 

great amount of zeal, though the latter is quite a new 
institution amongst them. 

Hopscotch, tops, kites, battledore and shuttlecock, 
fencing, archery, puss-in-the-corner, and all manner of 
other games are played there as with us ; in fact, almost 
every game except (at least when I was there) ping- 
pong. That, so far, has escaped reaching as far East 
as Japan — and they can do without it — because their 
samisen music makes up for the equally discordant 
sounds produced by ping-pong. 

The Japanese are extremely clever jugglers, 
amongst the finest in the world, and even the smallest 
children are adepts at keeping several balls going at 
once. They run round a room with four or more 
balls on the move, throw them over their heads, and 
catch them again behind their backs. There is no 
limit to the amount of ingenuity they display at 
inventing new ball tricks, and it seems one of the 
favourite indoor amusements amongst the girls. 
Sometimes they have matches in which the losers 
pay a forfeit, and for every miss receive a dab on 
the cheek with a paint brush from the winner. They 
will juggle with several balls, and clap their hands 
when these are in the air, or catch them in one 
hand and pass a fan over or under them with the 



100 CHILDREN, OLD AND YOUNG 

other in rapid succession. The boys indulge in a 
more boisterous game, not unlike our rounders, but 
which they play with a harder ball and attempt to hit 
each other whilst running. The accuracy of their aim 
is astonishing, and it requires a fast sprinter to evade 
being hit with some considerable force. 

Their most marvellous feat is accomplished with 
tops. They will spin a top, throw it into the air, and 
catch it on the blade of a sword, or allow it to spin up 
and down the edge. At times they spin a top, raise 
it on to one arm, and by wriggling their bodies, allow 
the top to pass along one arm, round the neck, and 
down the other arm. Some of their tops are wonder- 
fully made. Outwardly they resemble an ordinary 
humming-top, but made of boxwood, which, when 
spun, will throw out five or six baby tops, and so you 
see suddenly a whole family of tops spinning merrily 
on. I have seen two top spinners throw these spin- 
ning tops to each other and catch them on the blade 
of a knife. 

Most people have heard about and probably seen 
the paper butterfly trick performed by Japanese. 
They place three screens or boards around them, hand 
round a piece of white tissue paper for inspection, and, 
when the audience have satisfied themselves that there 



ACROBATS 107 

is no deception, will proceed to cut the paper into the 
shape of a butterfly. By the aid of a fan and carefully 
regulated currents of air — which they can alter by 
means of the screens — they will keep one or more 
butterflies fluttering about the room. The paper 
butterfly, with outstretched wings, will alight for a 
fraction of a second on the man's hand or on a flower 
and then hover about again. It is a wonderful exhi- 
bition of skill, and I firmly believe there is no decep- 
tion. I have taken pains to discover a hair or thin piece 
of wire either attached to the fan, paper, or some piece 
of furniture, but was unable to do so. I have handled 
the paper before and after the performance, but always 
without detecting any fraud, and have even attempted 
to keep the butterfly on the move, but with invariably 
the same result — hopeless failure. If there is a hair 
attached it is so cleverly done that the naked eye can- 
not detect where it has been fixed to the paper, and 
with that unsatisfactory solution I must leave you to 
discover a more satisfactory one for yourself. 

As acrobats the Japanese probably excel any other 
nation. Not content with performing their tricks on 
a stage platform or open street, they profane their 
temples with all manner of acrobatic feats, though 
they do not indulge in them to the same extent as the 



los ciiTi/ouEN, oi;n .xnd young 

Chinese. No acrobatic feat seems to puzzle them, 
and I have seen a man balance himself on one hand and 
with the other juggle with balls to his heart's content. 
With the greatest coolness and deliberation they will 
go through their turns in the open street or on 
an impromptu stage, and there is seldom a hitch 
or a fall. Until they have mastered a particular 
trick they will not perform in public. 

The favourite house game amongst girls and 
women is what is called kiistine, or fox. Two girls 
sit opposite each other, holding a piece of cord with 
a loop in the middle. The object of the game is 
for a third party to grab a piece of cake on the 
opposite side of the loop before she gets her hand 
caught. If she gets caught she pays a ken^ or for- 
feit ; if she reaches the cake she may enjoy it. 
Another form is called kitsunc kcn^ in which the 
fingers are held in difFerent positions, or placed on 
the hips or shoulder. The idea is that different 
positions denote a fox, gun, and man. Thus, if 
one girl makes the man sign and the other the gun 
sign, the former wins, because the man is supposed 
to rank above the gun, and the gun is considered 
more deadly than the fox. As can be imagined, 
each sign does not take long to make, and so one 



KTTSUNE KEN 109 

might be led to suspect that the game would, after 
a short time, become monotonous ; but between each 
sign the girls clap hands and sing a verse or two 
of a song, so that they should not be thinking 
about what sign to make next ; and with the last 
word of the song the players show hands. Another 
game like this is what is called hana hana^ in which 
one player touches different parts of her face, and 
the other must follow suit. As, for instance, one 
player will say hana hana (nose, nose), whilst point- 
ing to her cheek, and the other must not imitate 
her companion's fingers, but touch that part of her 
face which her friend mentions — her nose, and not 
her cheek. If they lose they again pay a ken. Some- 
times another form of ken is played in which no 
apparatus is required. Two persons sit opposite 
each other with closed fists, and at a given signal 
they open their hands simultaneously, showing one, 
two, three, four, or five fingers. If the shower 
displays four fingers and her opponent three, she 
wins ; but if they are both alike, the person who 
guesses takes the prize, or demands the forfeit, and 
blacks her companion's face. It may seem an un- 
necessarily severe punishment for the loss of a game 
to have your face dabbed with black paint, but 



110 CIIILDTIEN, OLD AND YOUNG 

not when one takes into consideration the fact that 
every house has all the implements ready at hand. 
When the Japanese write they do not use pen and 
ink, but brush and paint ; and so dabbing each other's 
faces seems to them the most natural and handy 
score with which to pay their debt. 

The Japanese are born gamblers, though not to 
the same extent as the Chinese. A Chinaman will 
gamble for anything ; and it is not uncommon to 
see them tossing or playing some game of chance 
with a hawker or a street food-seller for their daily 
bread. Their last farthing will go at a game of 
fan-tan^ or some other gamble ; night after night 
they will visit their dens and play until they have 
barely a stitch of clothing to go about with. In 
Japan gambling has to a great extent been suppressed 
by the Government, but horse-racing and card-play- 
ing are greatly in vogue. Their cards are quite 
different to those we use ; instead of numbers they 
have flowers painted on them — Juma^ as they are 
called. They are divided into twelve sets of four, 
each set having flowers of the different months. 
Thus cherry blossom will denote April, and the 
four April cards will be again distinguished by a 
different mark, or by writing. 



CAiM) nwWiNC in 

Poker has iilso hccn introduced amongst (he 
gentry in I'okyo, l)iit <) Id Japonaise ; antl then 
they c:dl tlie cards turdnipit^ to distinguish them 
from the hana-garula^ or flower canls. 

One more word upon the games on ofK; (luit 
is indulged in oidy by tlic grown-up chiKh'cn on 
account of its difficulties — the go. It is no( iiidike 
our chess, hut hiinlcr :uul more intricate. I often 
watched them playing it on hoard ship, and though 
some of them were kind enough to teach me I he 
rudiments of the game, I was more haflled at the 
enil than before I tried to learn it. Sometimes it 
takes hours to finish a game; aiul my advice is, 
do not attempt to learn it if you want to remain 
sane. The boanl is divided by nineteen cross and 
horizontal lines forming squares, which makes 361 
intersections. Mr. A. covers his crosses with iHi 
white stones, and Mr. H. with 1 Ho Idack ones. 
'I'he object of the game is to secure your opponent's 
stones, and, as in chess, to defend your own side. 

Throughout the life of a Jaj)anese, games form 
the great item of amusement. They read little, be- 
cause their literature is scanty, and so when they 
have a little spare time they indulge in s(jme form 
of recreation by playing one of the games 1 have 



112 CIIII.DKKN, OLD vV N 1) YOUNC; 

enumerated. If they cannot take an active part, 
they are perfectly content to watch others. 

Imagine an aged gentleman with grey hair 
flying a kite for pure amusement, playing marbles, 
or spinning tops. We should term it second child- 
hood, but in Japan that is unknown ; they are born 
children, and die cliildren. 

Althc^ugh Sir Rutherford Alcock flatters the 
country by saying it is a paradise of babies, even 
such a paradise has its disadvantages. It is almost 
impossible to walk five yards in Tokyo without 
running down, or being run down by, a score or 
more children. It is hardly safe to drive along the 
streets, and so coolies are employed as fore-runners 
to clear the way. When these men arc tired they 
climb up behind the carriage, or assist pulling horses 
and carriages up hills. 

One more word before I close this chapter. I 
do not wish it to be taken as disrespectful to the 
Japanese, because in a foreign language none of us 
are infallible ; but when you see painted on a sign- 
board, garnished with gaudy colours, " Manifacters 
of Hare, barbers shaving and shamboo," it makes 
one smile. They are an extraordinary nation at 
inventing words and names. A Japanese will take 



ADVEllTISEM KNTS 118 

an Knglish dictionary and concoct the most ungram- 
matical sentence imaginable, firmly believing his 
fortune is made. lie may not be far wrong, be- 
cause the absurdity of some of their sign-boards is 
bound to attract the attention of passers-by, who 
will enter those shops to purchase some article or 
other. 

"A shop for to Uio m.'ilce of Goods 
from -silk worms ;uul oilier ;inimal merchants." 

This outside a large shop where some of the best 
Japanese embroideries are made. A Japanese may 
ask an Englishman what sign to print over his 
shop, possibly a public-house. In all good faith 
the Englishman may tell him, "Sellers of ales and 
spirits, wholesale and retail." The man, not quite 
grasping the pronunciation, will distort what you 
told him into 

" Cellcra of ails aiul spililcs 
Holcsail and lelael." 

Labels of beer bottles are works of originality, if 
not of art. They arc, however, the attempts of 
the Japanese to imitate the ways of the Europeans, 
and their shortcomings must be forgiven them. 



H 



CHAPTER VI 

THE GEISHA 

My friend and I spent some time at Kioto, and took 

a great interest in trying to study the people according 

to their different vocations in life. It is a study which, 

in order to do justice to each individual calling, would 

take a lifetime to learn. Some, of course, are more 

interesting than others, but Kioto probably affords one 

more opportunity of seeing the different manufactures 

and life of the people than any other town. There it 

is possible to see everything, though another town 

might be better for the study of a particular industry. 

What interested me most apart from the works of 

art, of which Kioto is the centre, were the Geisha, 

because it enabled me to notice the differences between 

a town and country Geisha ; it is almost a pity that 

the same name is given to each. The country Geisha 

as one sees her at Japanese houses is a person uncor- 

rupted in the moral sense, unaffected beyond the 

affectation essential to her calling, unpretentious be- 

114 



MORALITY 115 

cause she seems too innocent and artistic, and because 
it is the only thing she really cares for. In the towns 
the Geisha who are trotted out to perform before the 
average European might shock even many women 
who call themselves broad-minded ; they coquette, 
flirt, and fling themselves about. They are little 
better, in fact, than the European music-hall people 
who profane the word by calling themselves artists ; 
still, they are better, and they act in that way merely 
because the Europeans have taught them to do it. 
The European man has ruined the morality of the 
Japanese, and they will probably never regain it, 
because they realise that it means money, an increase 
in individual wealth, but it probably also means 
destruction sooner or later of the country, certainly 
of the social side of it. Japan, if she continues to 
modernise her women as rapidly as she has done, is 
doomed to have the whole of her society brought 
down to that point to which the society of Europe has 
become degraded. It is difficult even to say in which 
country in Europe it is worst. 

In this chapter I will try to limit my description 
to the country Geisha, and leave the other to those 
whom she fascinates more. 

I was staying at a tea-house in a village noted for 



116 THE GEISHA 

its Geisha troupe, and as it was April, and the cherry 
trees were in blossom, was enabled to witness a per- 
formance of the cherry dance. Let me try to explain 
as graphically as possible what took place. 

The room was rather larger than is usually the 
case in these houses, and at one end were several 
cushions for the accommodation of the spectators. 
Shortly after we had taken our seats the partitions 
were silently drawn apart, and there, salaaming on the 
ground, their hands palm downwards, and their faces 
buried in them, were nine little Geisha girls, robed in 
the most exquisite dresses imaginable ; the kimonos 
trailing, thickly quilted at the bottom, on the ground 
round their feet, the obi^ of a different colour to 
the dress itself, held in place by a narrow piece of silk 
cord of another shade, the lining of the sleeve picked 
out with silk of a varying tone, and yet, though each 
colour was absolutely different, all were in harmony 
with each other, and with the surroundings nothing 
clashed. 

They rose, shufHed into the room (not wobbled, as 
one sees them imitated here), and bowed again, bend- 
ing almost to the ground, their bodies, legs, and arms 
forming in each case three sides of a square. Then 
the performance commenced. The nine took up their 




Td face /J. nu 



19. THE GEISHA. 



MAKING-UP 117 

positions squatting on their heels, the singers and 
dancers in the centre, and the musicians, four in 
number, two on each side of them. The musicians at 
once commenced unstrapping their instruments, and 
so long as they were merely unstrapping them, we 
showed a lively interest in what they were doing ; but 
they soon began tuning them, according to their ideas 
of tuning, not ours. The dancers at this stage drew 
out from beneath the folds of their dresses small 
*' make-up " boxes containing their paints, which, 
with the assistance of water and a cloth, they mixed 
and smeared over their faces. So intent were they upon 
beautifying themselves that they seemed absolutely to 
ignore the very existence of visitors ; there, in the 
presence of interested spectators, they commenced 
painting their cheeks, pencilling their eyebrows, and 
rouging their lips. If they did not consider pink lips 
suited their particular fancy, they would rub it off 
again, and change the colour to whatever they thought 
more consistent with the surroundings. 

The beautifying over, the band commenced to 
play, and the Geishas to sing ; song and music were 
both equally harsh to our ears. It may seem to them 
— educated to those sounds — harmony, but to the ears 
of a Westerner it was the most awful noise imagin- 



118 TTTE GKTSTIA 

able ; a German band in England, an Italian barrel- 
organ, or a poor street singer, arc all preferable to the 
ounds of discord we were treated to, and had the 
music continued much longer without the diversion 
of dancing, wc could not have remained to hear it. 
With the opening chords, however, the dancing 
began; the live remaining Geishas rose slowly from 
the groumi, and all together in unison, each with a 
branch of elierry blossoms in lier hand, commenced 
(he most beautiful dance 1 have ever witnessed ; each 
movement, each bend of their thin, lithe bodies, each 
turn of the head equally graceful — nowhere can such 
grace and such dancing be seen in so much perfection 
— no rustle of skirtvS, no high-kicking, or attempts on 
the part of the performers to attract the attention of 
their spectators by winks and grimaces — nothing done 
except to charm, and everything done for pure love 
of dancing, and not because ilire necessity compels. 
Therein lies the success of Japan, no matter in 
what ; they act, dance, work, in fact do every- 
thing, with their hearts in what they are doing, 
oblivious of their surroundings. Where, upon the 
European dancing stage at music-halls, can the same 
thing be said ? In most cases the danseuse goes through 
her turns more like a machine than a human being ; 



riiK i)AN(i^: no 

night after night she performs probably the sanie 
dance, sings the same songs, and the more vulgar 
her song, the more applause she gets. She aets 
merely for her audience, and plays up to thejn ; 
whilst in the i'last every dancer is an artist, pure 
and simple : she dances because she likes it, and is 
graceful because she is taught it from her infancy. 
A Geisha does not spring up in otie day. She is 
educated to it from her earliest childhood, taught 
to sing, dance, or play on musical instruments. 
She studies with her heart in the work she wishes to 
perfect. In Japan she is the person to entertain ; no 
party is complete without her; she is, in fact, to 
Japan and to the Japanese Court, what the king's 
jester was in Europe in times gone by. Her repartee 
is extraordinary, she knows everything worth knowing, 
she must be posted up in all the latest scandal, should 
know the best stories ; and with these she amuses her 
audience when it is satiated with dancing and music. 
She is the toy of society, its playmate and entertainer ; 
no one takes her seriously ; her vocation in life is to 
amuse and to please. 

Of beauty, the less said the better, because beauty 
at the best of times is but skin deep, and, when 
painted over with rouge and rice-water, a little deeper 



120 THE GEISHA 

still. What, after all, is beauty? It is merely an 
impression of the mind, which, according as one is 
differently constituted, may or may not appeal to that 
particular sense where the beautiful is felt ; it is that 
which pleases : and as different things please different 
persons, so beauty may instil a feeling of admiration 
and love in one person, whilst another may be im- 
pervious to its attractions. The beauty of the Geisha 
lies not merely in the dress or face, and all that apper- 
tains to it, but in the whole — the dancing, movement, 
and colouring. 

In European burlesques, when one sees an imita- 
tion of a Japanese lady, whether Geisha or otherwise, 
she wobbles on to the stage, with both hands stuck 
out sideways, her dress — a poor representation of the 
kimono — far too short and tight-fitting, and high- 
heeled shoes on her feet. The Geisha cannot walk 
like that, because, in the first place, their kimonos^ which 
trail on the floor, will not allow it ; they would trip 
at each step : and secondly, because they wear sandals 
which are not fixed to the feet, and so, were they 
to lift them, they would be perpetually losing or 
running after their slippers. Europeans have, of late, 
been privileged to see a Japanese in her native dress 
shuffle across the stage, if they saw Madame Yakko, 



SUPPER 121 

who acted for some time in London, and previously 
in America. If those stage managers who attempt 
to introduce Geisha dances on their stages had seen 
Yakko, they would never make the ludicrous repre- 
sentations and imitations they have made. 

Directly the performance was over, and the 
" musical " instruments (pardon the use of the word 
musical) had been packed away, some of these Geisha 
retired to the kitchen, and entered after a few 
moments with all the delicacies (according to their 
ideas) imaginable, all neatly arranged on a beautiful 
lacquer tray. This was placed on a low table, a few 
inches only from the ground. Another Geisha entered 
with a kind of teapot and small egg-cups, which she 
proceeded to fill with the contents of the pot. The 
liquid looked like very weak tea, but we were in- 
formed it was sake^ the national beverage, which was 
served hot. Let him who takes a fancy to saki^ 
which in taste is not unlike weak sherry, beware not 
to take it to excess ; it is not strong so long as only 
a moderate amount of it is consumed ; but take too 
much — even if it only makes one amusing instead of 
intoxicated — and the follies of the night haunt one 
all next day. Lamp-posts are sought for diligently 
next morning to cool the feverish head ; the way 



122 THE GEISHA 

that poor head has to suffer for the modest excess is 
cruel. 

With this say^ which is a kind of liqueur, sweet- 
meats are served, an equivalent of the American cock- 
tail so invariably indulged in there before meals. As 
I said before, Japanese do everything backwards ; 
they serve liqueurs and sweets before the fish and 
entrees. After these have been demolished, and per- 
haps even by some relished, soup is served in small 
china bowls, then fish of various kinds, some raw, 
others smoked, fried, or boiled. Each person has a 
number of small bowls placed before him on a 
lacquer tray, and, with the aid of chopsticks, tries 
to satisfy his appetite. Raw fish does not sound 
tempting, nor yet does it look appetising, but so 
daintily is it served by these little girls that one is 
apt to forget what the bowl really contains, and eats 
it before one realises what it is. Every tray would be 
incomplete without the inevitable dish of boiled rice ; 
and it is by eating this that one can display any skill 
one possesses in the use of chopsticks. Fish is hard 
to eat with two pieces of wood, but when it comes to 
a mash which will not adhere to the sticks, the difficulty 
becomes appalling. 

After the Geisha had served round the dinner, they 



oi 



A RECITATION 123 

tuned up again, emitting from their instruments that 
plaintive wail we had heard before. The sound re- 
sembled badly played banjos out of tune and the 
noise of ping-pong intermingled. The others danced 
again, and sang as they moved about, gliding across 
the room, now bending back, now posing, and with 
their fans gracefully held above their heads they 
told their stories. So wonderful are their posings 
and movements that one can understand plainly what 
their legends mean. The words of the song are un- 
intelligible, but by following the turnings of their 
bodies and expressions on their faces, one is able to 
comprehend what they are talking about. 

Sometimes a man will also dance or recite. When 
he does so, he seems to be so engrossed in what he is 
doing that he is quite oblivious of his surroundings. 
Should he recite something in which a man, at first 
sane, suddenly through grief becomes demented, he 
works himself up to such a pitch of madness and 
frenzy as to quite alarm the spectators. If he imitates 
what is known as the devil's dance, the impersonation 
is so weird as to almost terrify one. He rushes about 
the room, emitting from his lips sounds terrible to 
hear, his eyes roll, so that at times the iris disappears 
entirely, his veins stand out, he is capable of altering 



124 THE GEISHA 

the colour of his face at will ; one moment it will 
appear calm and white, the next almost crimson and 
convulsed with rage. 

At the end of the performance, such an extra- 
ordinary effect have these various dances on the 
mind, that applause seems out of place ; one is 
unable to give vent to the feelings experienced. It 
is just as impossible to applaud the Geisha as it would 
be to applaud a fine sermon in a church, or a per- 
formance of " Parsifal " at Bayreuth ; one is carried 
beyond the stage of mere enjoyment and pleasure — 
it impresses one to such an extent that the only 
desire is to be left alone to think. To go away 
and hear some one say, " It was really very pretty," 
would be as crushing a blow to the imagination as to 
attempt to discuss a fine piece of weird scenery when 
one is in full view of it. 

The musical instruments are housed again in their 
shells, paint boxes, and all the paraphernalia of a 
Geisha, are packed away, and the little girls at once 
proceed to change their kimonos for some of more 
sombre colours. This they do in full view of every 
one, but with such delicacy that the most narrow- 
minded, modest person could not blush. It would 
be hard to blush at anything a Geisha does or says, 



\7 



CHOPSTICKS 125 

it is done and said so naturally ; one would as readily 
be shocked at some faux pas a child might make. 
Whilst they are slipping off one kimono^ the other takes 
its place, so that at no period of the change can any- 
thing be seen which is not supposed to be seen. The 
obi is then tied and fixed in place by the aid of the 
silk cord, and the little Geisha is transformed from 
a dancing-girl, a toy, into a beautiful lady of society, 
a sedate little woman. She takes her seat amongst 
her audience, and partakes of her supper. It is a 
most interesting sight, after one has battled with 
chopsticks for some time, to witness the deft way 
in which these little ladies handle them — nothing ever 
seems to fall — they hold a piece of fish as tightly 
as if it had been fixed in a vice ; and to see them 
pick up peas from a plate or out of a bowl is a 
tuition. They will pick up several hundreds in the 
same time as it would take an inexperienced " chop- 
sticker" to pick up two — the dainty way in which 
they eat is remarkable — their manners always perfect, 
manners such as even the last of the dandies would 
have done well to imitate. 

The whole time a continual chatter is kept up, 
jokes are cracked, stories told at which they giggle 
as only a Geisha can. It is always a sad moment when 



126 THE GEISHA 

the " sayonara " — good-bye — comes ; one experiences 
the same feelings as one does after seeing one's best 
friend off at a station, a feeling of melancholy. 

In Europe the name Geisha has, I think, been 
wrongly interpreted. People often imagine that 
every tea-house girl is a Geisha ; they imagine, in fact, 
that a Geisha is a person who merely ogles the men, 
flirts, and behaves like most European barmaids. 
They are wrong ; in the Treaty Ports I acknowledge 
that the Geisha are rather more " free " than in smaller 
places inland ; but then the Treaty Ports do not (merely 
because more Europeans visit them, and in that way 
teach them what they know to exist at home) justify 
the theory that a Geisha is not a lady whom a respectable 
person would not care to know or invite to her house. 
The Geisha at Tokyo or other large towns are no real 
Geisha at all, because they look upon their perform- 
ances from the point of view of trade, and have 
ceased to be artists as they are inland. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE STAGE 

After travelling for some weeks only in the interior 
of Japan, away from the beaten tracks, where the life 
of the country could be studied and the wonders of 
nature admired to one's heart's content, I at length 
arrived at Tokyo. To be in a European hotel again 
and sleep on a spring mattress fell little short of a 
novelty. 

Walking along one of the streets I saw a crowd 
of people. All seemed to be talking together and 
gesticulating wildly. The reason of this was that 
DanjurO was giving a performance inside the house 
where all these people were gathered, and as I dis- 
covered it was the interval time I took seats in a box 
to witness what turned out to be the finest piece of 
acting I have ever seen. Though barely understanding 
two consecutive words of stage Japanese, 1 could with 
ease follow the plot of the story. The theatre re- 
sembled nothing I had ever seen before. The whole 



128 THE STAGE 

floor was covered with what looked like small square 
boxes, each with a door. Each box held perhaps six 
or eight persons squatting on the ground. The 
floor, in fact, seemed covered with a mass of black 
heads and coloured kimonos. Round the theatre ran 
a broad gangway, and above this were boxes, in one 
of which I secured a seat. 

It was about 2 p.m. when I reached the theatre, 
and was told the performance had begun at 1 1 a.m. 
and would end about 8 p.m. The floor of the theatre 
when empty looks like a chess-board. Soon the people 
took their places again, the curtain rose, and the play 
went on. 

To see one act alone is a revelation. Danjuro 
walked in stately grandeur down one of the gangways 
amongst the audience, and when on the stage gave the 
finest piece of acting any one could see. The scenery 
was unpretentious ; certainly it could hardly be com- 
pared to any scenic effects in some of the large Euro- 
pean theatres, but being unpretentious it gave one 
more opportunity of witnessing and enjoying the 
acting qualities of the performers. The opening act 
depicted a row between two men over a woman ; not 
the usual stage woman, a lovely creature in still more 
lovely dresses, but one impersonated by a man, and 



ICHIKAWA DANJURO 129 

that man was Danjuro. The act proceeded ; the 
men, after many gesticulations, fought a desperate 
duel with curved swords, called katana^ in which one 
unfortunate was killed. His death-struggle was won- 
derful ; he took nearly five minutes to die. The fair 
lady (Danjuro) the whole time looked on, but the 
remaining man seemed so perturbed at what he had 
done that he took poison, and the heroine, feeling 
alone in the world, followed his example. Danjuro's 
death was the most realistic performance imaginable. 
He writhed on the floor, his face terribly contorted, 
and his body bent almost double with imaginary pain. 
The Occidental lady would have reclined gracefully on 
a sofa, careful that no frills were showing ; her face 
would have the same beautiful complexion procured 
by No. 3 grease paint. When all had succeeded in 
dying they did not, as with us, spring to life again and 
bow gracefully to the applause of their audience, but 
remained, as far as the spectators were concerned, dead. 
When the curtain descended, instead of hand- 
clapping, the audience jumped up and rushed to the 
curtain, which they lifted, and watched with huge 
interest the setting of the next scene. It seemed 
quite the thing to do, and was evidently included in 
the price of their seats. Whilst the younger genera- 



130 THE STAGE 

tion were amusing themselves by watching and talking 
to the scene-shifters, the elder ones seemed to enjoy a 
good hearty meal. They had brought all the para- 
phernalia requisite for tea-making, and with dried 
fish, sweets, and sake^ seemed to be satisfying their 
appetites to their hearts' content. Smoking of course 
is permitted throughout the day. In place of the 
electric bell to summon the people to take their seats 
a deafening sound rent the air caused by gongs, drums, 
and other noisy instruments. The band then broke 
out into strains of disquieting music, which has 
already been described in another place, and con- 
tinued to do so throughout the remainder of the 
day. 

The second piece was a comedy, in which a re- 
nowned comedian took part. His face seemed to be 
made of indiarubber ; he was able to completely alter 
it in a second, as also was Danjuro, whose real name 
is Horikoshi Shu, with of course the usual appellation 
of " san " stuck at the end, which, however, only 
means Mr. or Miss according to the sex of the indi- 
vidual in question. The versatility of Danjuro is 
marvellous. Though now an old man he can dance 
and tire out hundreds who are younger than he 
is. The power he has over the muscles of his face 



FACIAL CONTORTIONS 131 

would teach a doctor of great learning that he did 
not understand his anatomy, because he would never 
believe such contortions possible. Without paint or 
any make-up he can alter the expression of his face in 
a most astounding way. One eye turns up and the 
other down, or both roll round in opposite directions 
with equal facility. When he is mad, he looks every 
inch a madman ; when he plays the part of a drunkard, 
you can hardly imagine him sober, so realistic is the 
performance. 

The dress on the stage is rather different to their 
modern costumes. They still imitate the daimyos^ 
nearly all carry swords, and wear their hair with the 
pigtail under a kind of cap sticking out at the back. 
They do not walk in the ordinary sense of the word, 
they strut, their knees almost touching their chins. 
Sir Henry Irving's stage-walk is the nearest approach 
to anything analogous to the Japanese stage gymnas- 
tics. It is a feat in itself, and must require a great 
deal of practice. A German infantry regiment march- 
ing before the Kaiser may give those who have not 
studied Sir Henry's walk some idea of the stately 
manner in which the Japanese actors walk. Every 
muscle is strained, every attitude as unnatural as pos- 
sible ; the parade in both cases is equally ludicrous. 



132 THE STAGE 

In the one, however, they do it because all actors 
have walked like that for generations past, and so it 
appears less absurd than in Germany where the small, 
fat infantryman, with head erect (he could probably 
not see his feet even were he to look down), shoulders 
braced, and legs thrown out in unison with the band, 
performs his antics to the " Parade March." 

Actors are usually descended from a family of 
actors. Danjuro is the ninth who has distinguished 
himself on the stage. 

The dresses themselves are richly covered with 
gold and silver, and the silk is of the heaviest, and so 
will last for many generations. 

Until quite recently the actors, and in fact the 
whole theatrical world of Japan, was looked down on ; 
but some years ago the Mikado attended a perform- 
ance, and since then actors have been received in the 
best societies. Formerly, if any one respectable went 
to a theatre he went in disguise, and when the census 
was taken (to give an idea of the disgrace they were 
subjected to) they were counted, not as human beings, 
but like animals, ippiki ni-hiki^ &c., instead of ichi nin, 
ni nin, san nin, shi nin, and go nin — the nin standing 
for person — that is, one person, two persons — whilst 
hiki at the end of the numerals denotes some beast 



STAGE PROPERTIES 133 

or other. Thus ippiki or ichi hiki stands for one 
beast, &c. The people who used to attend the 
theatres were the lower middle classes. 

One striking peculiarity about the stage in Japan 
is the lack of stage effects. No drop-scene will ever 
have a moon cut out of the canvas and a candle 
behind to illuminate her or pin holes to represent 
stars. It appears too unnatural to the mind of a 
Japanese ; he would sooner paste a piece of paper over 
the place where he wants the moon to shine and write 
on it, " This is the moon," or " These are stars." 
The whole stage, in fact, is comparatively bare. The 
lights are worked not by means of electric or lime- 
light, but by a sort of hooded man in black, who 
carries a candle round illuminating what he wants 
lighted up. These black goblins hurry about from one 
side to the other, and apparently are as little noticed 
by the audience as the prompter who stands behind 
the man that speaks, and when that man has finished, 
hurries to the next spokesman. At first this is 
rather apt to distract one's attention, and the plot 
seems in consequence more difficult to follow, but 
soon one becomes so engrossed in the acting that the 
prompter and light workers perform their tasks un- 
noticed. Another peculiarity is their great dislike to 



134 THE STAGE 

make use of any animals on the stage. One would 
never see a horse or dog brought on to perform some 
antic ; it has been tried, but every time with the most 
disastrous effects. Though trained to perfection 
before its debut, it has in every case given no end "of 
trouble, and refused to do credit to its trainer when 
the time for its public performance arrived. In the 
place of live animals they will substitute something 
equally effective though possibly less realistic. 

If a man dies during a scene black men again come 
on and cart him off ; he might be in the way were he 
to remain there dead, and the space is generally limited. 
The theatres are probably the only remnants of old 
Japan which still exist ; the old costumes still survive, 
and the old language is still to be heard on the Japanese 
stage. 

The theatres of Japan date back many centuries. 
In fact, in the first written records of Japan, mention 
is made of the no^ as it was called. It consisted of 
dances of a religious kind, and songs which hardly 
differed from Buddhistic chants and hymns. Later, 
acting was also introduced in conjunction with a 
chorus, and was generally carried out by the recita- 
tion of poems of a dramatic nature. The no has not 
been entirely done away with, but has ceased to be a 



"KABUKI" 135 

public performance, and now is only carried out by 
those nobles who have had it handed down to them 
from their ancestors. The old language is still ad- 
hered to, and the spectators follow the play, book in 
hand, because the language is as hard for them to 
understand as Shakespearian plays are in many cases 
to us. The present method of having the orchestra 
performing during the whole of the play may have 
originated with the no. 

After the no actors came the kabuki actors, who 
were as much despised as the others were honoured. 
The styles of the two were absolutely different, and 
may be distinguished by saying that the no theatres 
represent theatres where classical plays are performed, 
to which the more learned people go ; whilst the kabuki 
theatres are more analogous to our music-halls or 
theatres in small provincial places. If any man of 
respectable standing visited a kabuki theatre, he gene- 
rally found it advisable to go in disguise, so as to 
avoid having aspersions cast on his character, or else 
had to remain at home. Now every one visits the 
theatres, and it has become one of their chief sources 
of amusement. 



CHAPTER VIII 

CIVILISATION 

As soon as a country is discovered, and in the 
case of Japan the discovery dates back as far as 
1542, the religious question is the first that is 
considered. Through the medium of religion 
nations hope to effect the civilisation they wish to 
establish. 

I do not mean to suggest that Japan was a land 
of savages, who, through the influence of Euro- 
peanism, became transformed into a nation more 
analogous to our own. By civilisation I mean the 
development a nation undergoes, whether it entails an 
improvement or not — the importation of new ideas 
and methods. 

If a nation is civilised it must of necessity lose 
much of its originality and individuality. It must 
become like the nations who wish to eflfect that civili- 
sation. If an inartistic nation lands in a country 

where every man is an artist, those people must of 

136 



COMMODORE PERKY 137 

necessity become less artistic, because of the changes 
of ideas that are instilled into them. 

Japan's real introduction to the civilised world 
cannot be said to have commenced until Commodore 
Perry landed from America and concluded a treaty 
by which certain ports were to be opened to American 
ships. That was barely fifty years ago, and since then, 
by rapid strides, other treaties have been effected with 
England and other European Powers, and the civili- 
sation of the country has been undertaken by the 
peoples of Europe. No country has so readily con- 
formed to the ideas of her masters as Japan has done. 
In these few years she has risen from a nonentity to a 
nation that can cope with almost any other. The 
fact, however, remains, that although the change may 
have been beneficial to her from the standpoint of 
trade and commerce, and has enabled her to rank as 
an equal with the nations of Europe, yet it has been 
detrimental to the morality of her people, and has 
destroyed much of her art and the greater portion of 
her individuality. 

Take the countries of Europe and compare them 
with those of the East. In the one case the people, 
their customs, houses, everything is the same, based 
on modern conventionality. If a man builds a house 



IJW CIVIT.ISATION 

iu)( ill coiiionnity with the itrevailing style, he is said 
to he eeeeiitrie. liv lMin))>e no man, woman, or child 
is allowed --except in tlieoiy to do as he likes, and 
should he transgress and heoiMnc unconventional, his 
iieighhours arc shocked, his friends and relations turn 
against him as impossible. 

How different in the Ivast, where conventionality 
was unheanl of' in the hroailer sense of the word. 
There every man tlu>ught, said, and did what he 
liked, dresseil as he chose, ami went where he wanted, 
no mail io forhid him ov call him eccentric, no for- 
mvd:r upon which, it he wished to conform to the 
rules of society, he was forced to act. By conven- 
tionality I mean the conformahility to such rules or 
doctrines as are consistent with the modern ideas of 
modern society. 

By attempting (o civilise a nation you destroy 
every spark ot" originality that country formerly pos- 
sessed. The change may he slow, hut provided that 
country conforms to the modernisation, the destruction 
is at length bound to be complete. 

What has the result of civilisation been to Japan? 
It has destroyed, or gone a great step towards de- 
stroying, one of its chief characteristics, its universal 
art. Formerly every man, woman, and child in that 



DECREASE FN AKT 189 

country was a \)(>rn artist, hut through the change 
it has undergone, much of the artistic feeling has 
been destroyed. Examine the records of the country, 
go step by stej) rivi-r its history, and compare it with 
the Japan of to-day. 

Civilisation and niodcrn trains of thought have 
brought the country to the fore, have increased its 
trade, and found a market for its merchandise and 
manufactures; but they have also killed, stamped out, 
annihilated even, to a certain extent, its most priceless 
possession, its artistic taste. It still exists, but now 
articles are manufactured for which formerly a man 
would have been shunned had he dared to produce 
such a thing. The Japanese are far too clever not to 
realise that unless they conform in a certain degree to 
the demands of civilised nations they are doomed to 
remain poor. They have learnt by experience that 
unless they make things — no matter how repugnant 
their manufacture may be to them — to satisfy the 
wants of the less artistic world, they lose the much 
coveted gold. But they are also clever enough not to 
destroy all their originality or artistic taste — though 
it would have been small blame to them had they 
done so — and therefore Japan is one of the few 
nations that has been able to conform to the demands 



140 CIVILISATION 

of civilisation and still retain a certain amount of its 
individuality. 

Every country has its own particular methods, 
the people their own ways of living, dressing, and 
thinking, and so long as these still exist the country 
remains interesting ; but attempt to civilise it and you 
destroy those methods. People begin to see things 
with different eyes, their standpoints are altered, they 
begin to move in a different sphere. Ancient customs 
are done away with, originality in dress is dropped for 
the garments of civilised nations, the whole aspect of 
the country is changed, yes, even their very thoughts, 
the only thing a man can call his own. They become 
enlightened, mix with people of other nations, notice 
the introduction of modern appliances and the works 
of modern brains ; the country grows and expands, its 
inhabitants become wealthy, and with wealth their first 
degradation commences. Those who acquire riches, 
at first small, seek for more ; they realise that in order 
to obtain it they must rob and cheat their neighbours. 
And from whom have they learnt it } From no others 
than from the nations who attempted that civilisation. 
What has the civilisation of Japan done for that 
country ? Not only has it destroyed much of its art, 
it has also taught the nation dishonesty. Why are 



IMMORALITY 141 

the Japanese a band of rogues in business, who will 
put their names to any document, enter upon any 
contract, and the next moment repudiate it and their 
signatures too ? The answer is simple, and contained 
in the one word " civilisation." 

The Europeans came over to Japan and found 
there a country devoted to agriculture, no man rich, 
in our modern sense of the word, every man practically 
his own master to do what he wanted ; a simple- 
minded, moral nation. 

Practically, every nation that is uncivilised is 
moral, because they have not been taught to dis- 
tinguish between morality and immorality. Civilisa- 
tion opens their eyes, Europeans teach them, and 
missionaries attempt to suppress what they term 
immorality, but which in reality is only innocence. 

The first settlers found their harvest in Japan, 
they lent money to the nation, who did not even 
understand the relative value of silver and gold, 
plundered the inhabitants, took advantage of their 
ignorance, and the Japanese were helpless, because 
they were too uneducated to see the follies they were 
committing. In this instance, civilisation has been a 
boon to them, because the people awoke and saw how 
they were being swindled. The climax came, and the 



142 CIVILISATION 

nation retaliated with the same weapons. They found 
it easy to acquire wealth by imitating those who had 
robbed them, and the consequence is that it is now 
almost impossible to get the better of a Japanese. 
They have learnt their lesson and paid the price 
demanded. Formerly the country was divided into 
two sets, the rich and the poor. The middle class 
was hardly known ; a man was either a daimyo or a 
labourer. 

In less than twenty years Japan has acquired the 
knowledge it has taken us centuries to learn. In a 
few years they have built a fleet, which for the size of 
the country is magnificent — one that could compare 
favourably with almost any European navy. They 
have employed European engineers to build that fleet, 
gunners to teach them the use and mechanism of 
modern guns, and instructors to train their men, and 
now Japan is capable of declaring war on almost any 
other nation. 

Japan really made her d6but in the world-history 
when she declared war on China. What man in 
Europe ever divined the correct outcome of that war } 
Every one said poor Japan, a land of 40 millions 
against 400 millions. Poor ignorant Japan, that did 
not know a few years ago the diff'erence between gold 



ACQUISITION OF WEALTH 148 

and silver, that made Calcutta merchants rich by 
exchanging gold for silver of an equal weight. Every 
one considered them a nation of dolls and pretty toys, 
and were astonished when they found brains in their 
heads and courage in their hearts. Japan's hospital 
ships were the envy of the civilised countries, and 
when the war ended magnanimous Europe received 
her as almost an equal, adding that it was all 
right her beating China, but she must not be 
allowed to try the same thing on in Europe. She 
must, in fact, not be allowed to become too great 
a power. 

Does all this, however, compensate her for what 
she has lost .? Is the loss of art a sufficient compensa- 
tion for the acquisition of wealth, or the deterioration 
of her morals a sufficient compromise for whatever 
small pleasures she may find in the degradation to 
which Europeans have brought her ? 

Civilisation has brought the lower class women of 
Japan down to the lowest level of the women of 
our own countries — stamped out every particle of 
purity they possessed. Is that fair ? And yet for 
the truth of it examine any nation where civilised 
people have landed, be it in China, Egypt, the 
Colonies, or elsewhere, and the same result is seen. 



141 CIVILISyV'l ION 

IVopK' will lUf'iic lh:it ccrlain good always comes 
Irom the teachings of the civilised worki, hut is it 
not hettcr to sec a coimtry retain its antiijiiated 
idi-as, follow in the narrow groove of its ancestors, 
than to sec everything that was formerly beautiful 
destroyed ? 

Wherein, llun, lies the fallacy of civilisation? 
SinH-ly ill forcing on a nation modern li'ains of 
thoughl, modern iticas, ami llic ijogmas of a modern 
religion — forcing it on them so sudilcniy that they 
barely compreheml the meaning, and if they ilo grasp 
what they are being taught, are apt to misunderstand 
it. Try Mild (each a chiM arithmetic before it has 
learnt its alphabet, or a schoolboy dynamics, statics, 
trigonometry, and higher algebra before he has studied 
the elementary principles of mathematics, and he learns 
nothing; his brain In^comes fuddled simply because he 
is taught to reail before he can spell. 

The same ajijilies to the less civiliseil nations. 
Attempts arc made to teach them everything at once, 
their antiquateil ideas are suildenly swamped with 
the doctrines of modern thought. We know the 
gratlual changes that have taken place in J'lurojie ; we 
know how many hundreds of years of careful study it 
has tidvcn to bring us to our present degree ot pro- 



lUIDDIIISM 145 

ficiency, ;iiul yet wc iittcmpt, |iractic;illy in one day, 
to instil into Japan what wc have taken centuries 
ourselves to learn. 

A professor who has studied all his life is too 
clever a man to undertake the tuition of a small boy. 
The child first has a pjoverness, then a tutor or school 
training, and when his mind is capable of greater know- 
ledge he can understand the teachings of philosophy. 
The professor probably, too, would not have sufficient 
patience to instruct the child. I le woidd forget that 
his brain had also once been in an infantile stage, and 
that only by years of study had he attained his present 
proficiency. So also, I thiid<, do the European nations 
forget that they were not always as proficient in science 
or civilisation in general as they are at present, and so 
fail to understand any nation that has antiquated ideas. 

It is the same as if a person of the modern school 
tries to argue with those who were brought up fifty 
years ago. 'I'he two minds think so differently that 
argument becomes impossible. 

For thousands of years China and Japan have 
studied Buddhism, and have derived comfort ami hap- 
piness from the worship of their god, and yet are sud- 
detdy told to relinquish that religion and embrace the 
doctrines of Christianity. 



146 CIVILISATION 

In Japan the missionaries — who are usually the 
first introducers of civilisation— have not yet wrought 
as much harm as in other countries. It may be be- 
cause they have not yet had time, or it may be that the 
Japanese are too clever and avoid them as much as they 
can. Missionaries are less often seen in Japan than in 
other Eastern countries, and especially is their absence 
noticed in the interior of the country or on the less 
frequented roads, and in villages where few Europeans 
have been. In those smaller places inland can still be 
seen the charms of the people. There they live their 
own lives — the happy state of farmers. Women and 
children till the ground or water their fields and vege- 
tables, whilst the men carry the water in small buckets 
from the wells. Nature and her wonderful works 
exist in the interior of Japan in their uncorrupted 
state, uncorrupted because the fell hand of civilisation 
has not yet had a chance to spoil it. Go there and see 
the people ; every man is happy ; if he has a grief he 
feels it inwardly, but has such a control over himself 
as never to show it. See the hardworking labourers 
tilling the ground ; no man is ever idle, no man " un- 
employed," because if work does not come readily to 
his hands he goes and finds it. There is enough work 
for every man if he only wants it, and that is where 



y# 



AGKICULTURE 147 

the civilised nations of Europe differ so widely from 
the less civilised people of the East. There they look 
for it or employ themselves in some way, because every 
man is an artist. Every man's soul yearns for some- 
thing to do, something with which he can satisfy his 
mind, and to be out of work becomes to him a feeling 
of despair. In Europe if he can get help from 
charitable institutions he will not work ; he would 
sooner go round the streets amongst the bands of 
unemployed, and so impose on kind-hearted people, 
than earn a living by honest work. 

The agricultural industry in most countries has 
fallen, and fallen to their danger. Hardly a country 
in Europe, with the exception probably of Russia, can 
live on the products of its fields. England in a few 
weeks could be starved out if her Colonies were pre- 
vented from feeding her. Men would sooner live an 
unhealthy life in some squalid, filthy part of a large 
town, as near as possible to a public-house, than live 
a healthy life as farmers or farm labourers. To 
till the ground is beneath them, because they have 
been taught to read and write. A lower class woman 
shuns domestic service, because she thinks she loves 
her liberty so much that she would sooner live in a 
single room, subsist on bad food, and retain her free 



148 CIVILISATION 

evenings by serving behind a shop counter or being 
courted by fools in a bar, than have a comfortable 
home and wholesome food as a servant in a private 
house. These are the so-called blessings of modern 
civilisation. Japan, which is less civilised, is a pros- 
perous country ; it thrives on its art and manufac- 
tures ; it has sufficient produce to satisfy the nation 
and even export the surplus ; and why .? because 
civilisation has not yet had time to prey on the 
country to such an extent as to destroy every- 
thing. To be out of work is an expression un- 
heard of there. If the towns are stocked with 
people the surplus will go into the fields and till 
them, or into the rice field or tea plantations, any- 
where so long as they can find work to do. They 
have no trades unions to fix the prices of their wages, 
no strikes — the natural consequence — to throw men 
and women out of work and on the charity of others. 
They work, and in that work they find enjoyment 
and are happy. 

I should be sorry to suggest that all civilisation 
is bad ; some good is bound to be derived from 
it, and Japan has undoubtedly much for which 
to thank her civilisers. She has realised it too, and 
has thriven in many ways. Yet I maintain that the 



M^ 



THE EFFECT 149 

methods used to effect that degree of civilisation are 
wrong. 

People say it is selfish not to import modern know- 
ledge and modern thought to these people. Let them 
import knowledge which is sound, knowledge which, 
from their own personal experience, they find beneficial 
to a nation ; not knowledge of such a class as to bring 
the women of the country to the lowest ebb of degrada- 
tion ; not knowledge that will teach a country drunk- 
enness and prostitution, or teach its people to be 
discontented and destroy its art and every spark of 
originality and individuality it possessed. Examine 
each step carefully, weigh the pros and cons^ place on 
one side those acts of civilisation which have wrought 
benefits on the nations undergoing that treatment, and 
on the other side place the harm derived from it, 
weigh them in an impartial spirit, and see which 
side turns the scale. If the benefits outweigh the 
harm, then continue with the present system ; if the 
converse is found to be the answer, give up civilisation 
and the attempts of modern missionaries to impart to 
a nation an unsympathetic religion, change the system 
and method of civilisation, or, better still, adopt the 
midway course. 

What, after all, is civilisation ? It is the sum of 



150 CIVILISATION 

the results of individual influences upon society. 
When these influences are beneficial to the community 
to which they are applied, the civilisation is progres- 
sive ; when injurious, it is retrograde. Examine for a 
moment the state of Japan or China ; in both coun- 
tries for many centuries the civilisation advanced by 
steady steps without the aid of the outside world. 

China 150 years ago was the most civilised nation 
in the world, but owing to the old doctrines of 
Confucius still being prevalent in the country, it has 
ceased to expand, and has remained stationary for many 
generations. 

In Japan the people more readily conformed to our 
ideas, and were willing to a certain extent to entrust 
their advancement to European nations ; but still it 
is a doubtful point as to whether the civilisation of 
that country is progressive or retrograde. In some 
aspects it is progressive. It has adopted much that 
is beneficial to its community; but the influences of 
civilisation have also caused the country to go back- 
wards instead of forwards. Its morals have un- 
doubtedly, owing to these influences, deteriorated, 
its art has to a great extent diminished. The habits 
of the people, founded on the instinct of imitation, 
the love of luxury promoted by wealth, and the 



CHINA COMPARED 151 

restraint of liberty, which is the result of a dread 
of being censured by society, have all been influenced 
by civilisation to its deterioration. The bonds of 
modern conventionality are so strong at the present 
time that they will sooner or later produce a uniform 
type of character, which only the strongest and most 
unconventional will be able to resist. 

China is too vast an empire to bear comparison. 
Her people have retained far more of their ancient 
ideas than other nations. There the native cities are 
walled off from the European settlements, and so the 
Europeans have less chance of mixing with the people 
and teaching them their ideas. Canton, one of the 
largest native cities in China, is separated from any 
communication with the European island of Shar- 
meen by means of the Canton River. A bridge 
connects the island with the Chinese town, and a 
gate bars the entrance of any white man, unless 
the guard permits him to pass through. Canton 
of to-day is almost the same as it was a hundred 
years ago, the same narrow streets — squalid, un- 
healthy, littered with filth inches deep ; pools of 
stagnant water, patches of coagulated blood at every 
step, the entrails of various fowls and animals scat- 
tered over the road, present themselves at every 



152 CIVILISATION 

corner. The only difference is in the wares presented 
in the shop fronts — articles manufactured wholesale 
for the European and American markets. It is 
hard to realise that such a place can exist within a 
few yards of an island like Sharmeen, where the 
European consuls live and the merchants have their 
houses and warehouses — fine large stone houses 
almost alongside the most uncivilised place it is 
possible to conceive. 

The picture I have tried to draw of a Chinese 
town may not appear inviting, and people will prob- 
ably argue that it were better to lose individuality 
than allow such a place to continue to exist. The 
people, nevertheless, are happy: give them finer houses 
or cleaner streets and they are no better pleased. 
Attempt to reform their mode of living, and they 
are no more contented even if they become more 
cleanly, because for hundreds of years they and their 
forefathers have been used to such a life. 

Civilisation is more influenced by religion than by 
anything else, because the people will attempt to live 
according to their religious doctrines. Nations with 
different religions can never have the same degrees 
of civilisation, because of the moral influences caused 
by their particular religion. 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 153 

It is almost impossible to sum up the civilisation 
question of Japan, because we find so many conflicting 
testimonies. On the one hand, we have the man who 
spends only a few weeks in the country, and judges it 
merely from a globe-trotter's point of view, who has 
gone there with the intention of enjoyment. In nearly 
every case he is enraptured. On the other hand, we 
find that the man who is forced to make Japan his 
home returns to Europe slandering the people, telling 
his friends that she is an overrated country, and that 
the morals of the people are lower than in any other 
land — but he never says with what country he com- 
pares them.. Let him walk down Piccadilly at night, 
or visit some of the cafes at Paris, and if his sense of 
morality is not more disgusted than it was in Japan 
he must be either blind to the outward signs of vice, 
or else he must force himself, against his conviction, 
to denounce Japan and uphold that vice m his own 
country. 

Again, one man will argue that the Japanese are 
the most tender-hearted creatures in the world, who 
live up to the doctrines of Buddha, and kill no life 
to satisfy their appetite ; and yet another will call 
them inhuman, because they eat uncooked live fish, 
little remembering that we eat and relish lobsters 



154 CIVILISATION 

that are put alive into boiling water, or that we eat 
pdte de foie gras, knowing the torture to which the 
poor bird has been subjected. 

A comparison will be drawn between the massacre 
at Port Arthur (about which we heard so much at the 
time of the China and Japan war) and the humanity 
shown in warfare between civilised nations. The 
person who draws the comparison evidently forgets 
the massacres in Paris and Spain, where the grounds 
for revenge were purely of a religious nature, prac- 
tised on people who refused to conform to them. 
In the case of Japan the cause was to avenge those 
who had been captured by the Chinese, and tortured 
by them before the stronghold was taken. Few ever 
mentioned that, because they wished to show up the 
people in the worst possible light. The Japanese 
received the censure of the world for that unfortunate 
massacre, and yet the civilised nations were applauded 
(by many) for massacring the Chinese in the late war, 
merely because they refused to change their religion — 
that was at the bottom of the trouble. Why should 
the slaughter as practised by the Japanese in that one 
instance be unjustifiable, and yet, because a European 
potentate, who poses not only as a theologian but as 
a Christian, tells his soldiers, previous to their em- 



MISSIONARIES 155 

barkation for China, '' to go in and give no quarter," 
why does he receive the applause of the other civiUsed 
nations ? No Japanese Emperor would have addressed 
his troops in that way, because, being Buddhists, they 
live up to their doctrines, and adhere to their saying, 
" Don't do to others as you would not they should do 
to you." That is a maxim of an uncivilised nation, 
and one that we are trying to teach the elements of 
civilisation. How can they understand our methods 
when we do not even practise what we ourselves 
preach? 

Nations of Europe, what is your object in civilis- 
ing the Orient .? What aim have you in view that 
you are so zealous about the civilisation of these 
countries in the East ^ Is it to increase your com- 
mercial relations, or is it the hope of acquiring new 
territory .f* Is it in search of gold, or are your 
objects purely philanthropic ? I fear philanthropy, 
though it is the excuse given, plays a very small 
part in your machinations in the East. The mis- 
sionaries of some of the nations may have that object 
in view — the bettering of their fellow-subjects — but 
the missionaries of France are merely the advance 
agents of the Government, agents carefully chosen to 
give information about the doings of the other nations 



156 CIVILISATION 

— political spies. Was the treaty between France, 
Russia, and Germany, in 1895, a treaty to alleviate 
the sufferings of China, or was it a political intrigue 
because they feared that Japan's possession of Port 
Arthur would be detrimental to their interests ? Who 
can deny the truth of this accusation that each ot 
those three Powers had the same fear, that if Japan 
remained at Port Arthur and fortified it, she would 
hold the key to the Far East ? Russia's intention 
was manifest. She considered Port Arthur safer in 
her hands, guarded by Russian soldiers, than in the 
hands of Japan, whose strength she had witnessed in 
the China-Japan War. The Chinese, who in the 
Liao-tung peninsular were rejoicing that they had 
Japanese rule in place of the cruelties of Chinese 
oppression, were, owing to this Triple Alliance, to 
be cast back to their former state, to be at the mercy 
of relentless mandarins. In consequence, Russia seized 
Port Arthur. France, the faithful friend and ally, 
backed her up, though her interest was shrouded in 
obscurity. France joined because she felt an assur- 
ance of safety by taking the hand of her big brother, 
though her gain at the time was almost imperceptible. 
Russia bleeds her, forces her hand at every turn, and 
in return for a " kiss " given by the Potentate of 



THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 157 

the one country to the President of the other, receives 
a loan of millions of francs : one seems poor security 
for the other. The gain to France may never come, 
but yet she fears a refusal might have the effect of 
making her an enemy of Russia. Germany, to her 
shame, joined her "friends"; she, too, felt it safer 
to have Russia as a friend than as a foe, though I 
will give her credit for having another deeper reason 
than cowardice. Germany cast longing eyes on Kiao- 
Chou. She saw her chance, realised that it would be 
useful for coaling purposes, and thought (I believe 
she saw she was doing a dirty trick) Russian influence 
would help her. 

Civilised nations of Europe, are not these the 
objects for which you are all striving — the acquisition 
of wealth, greater facilities for your trade and com- 
merce, and the ultimate annihilation of the country 
you desire to civilise ^ Japan, a new nation, who had 
shed her heart's blood to take the stronghold of Port 
Arthur, who, in the face of the jeers of Europe at her 
futile endeavour (so they all thought then) to beat 
China, unheeding their warning, continued and suc- 
ceeded ; Japan, the land of pigmies and dolls, who 
thrashed the armies of China with her 400 million 
inhabitants, and was told at the very height of her 



i:)S C IVIMSATION 

triviinph to relinquish the very phico where so many 
of her bravest soldiers liad laid down their lives. She 
appealed to iMigland in her anouish, and the only 
consolation she reeeived was the advice that it was 
hopeless to resist the allied nations. The advice of 
Russia, France, and Germany, clothed in the robe of 
friendship, was to leave what she had gained tt"> her 
superiors, and run awav and play. This deep-laid 
scheme was shrouded under the title of *' Peace and 
Civilisation." 

What a mockery! A dog is taught to jiertorm 
tricks bv the aid of' a stick, and the man who puts 
him through his performance says it is all Aonc by 
kindness : on this principle have the would-be civilisers 
of the world turned Japan out of what she so dearly 
paid for, and then sav they have done it in the interest 
of civilisation. 

If these men wlio fell tighting for the honour of 
Japan, who lost their lives out of loyalty for their 
country, could awake now at\d see Russia snugly 
nested in Port Arthur, and Kiao-Chou in the hat\ds 
of Germans, how their souls would revolt against such 
injustice ! 

The commencement of the Boxer War in China 
dates from this period. The conspiracy was hatched 



I 



THE KAISFJUni.I) 159 

when the German Emperor sent Russia his Kaiserbild in 
1895 — an allegorical picture, called the Yellow Peril, 
in which he depicted the Archangel Michael, with 
sword in hand, exhorting his fellow-civilisers, and 
pointing to a flaming image of Buddha, to subdue 
China. Germany and Russia, in front, clasped in 
an embrace of friendship, I'^ngland reluctant at the 
back (his Germanic Majesty always gave Britain credit 
for lx;ing reluctant to engage in a mean trick), but in- 
duced by Austria to join. That picture, executed at 
the hands of Knackfuss from the Emperor's design, 
has a smattering of mockery. Did the Kaiser foresee 
the murder of his Ambassador, or the rising of the 
Boxers ? Did he divine the truth, that China would 
rise to protect her religion and try to drive out 
civilisation, or design his Kaiserbild with the in- 
tention of inducing his c^-civilisers to nag at 
China, with the knowledge that the pin-pricks 
would sooner or later touch a tender spot, and that 
her subjugation would follow.'* The evidence seems 
to point to the last solution, that it was a deep- 
laid plot — a tragedy in which the first act only 
has been played. 

So long as civilisation is carried on in the East in 
the way it has been, so long will those nations revolt, 



160 CIVILISATION 

until they :irc vatiquishcd, or arc strong enough to 
defeat their oppressors. 

The whole question of civilisation is so closely con- 
nected with the subject of my next chapter, that it has 
been hard to separate it altogether from religion. It 
is through the medium of religion that a favourable 
issue is looked for, and in trying to separate the two 
I may have laid myself open to attack from those 
whose ideas differ from mine. 



CHAPTER IX 

MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

The Japanese have always been a nation who were 
quick at understanding, intelligent, even beyond the 
hopes of the civilisers, and have outstripped in many 
respects the very people who have been trying to 
change them. 

The greatest harm which civilisation has produced 
in the Eastern countries is that caused by the mis- 
sionaries of which mention has already been made. 
As soon as a country is discovered the missionaries 
are almost the first to go out to minister to the 
wants of the people, and the result of this interference 
has in nearly every case led to riot and massacre. 
When the Portuguese landed there in the sixteenth 
century, St. Francois Xavier, a Jesuit priest, took up 
his residence in the country with his followers. 
Whatever they failed to accomplish by fair means 
they effected by foul means, and then appeared 
astonished that the Emperor had them massacred 



162 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

wholesale and closed his ports to any intercourse with 
Europe. It stands to reason that a country is jealous 
of its own religion, and refuses to embrace the religion 
of the first outsider who tries to teach it. 

The missionary societies probably would not have 
sufficient funds to continue the destruction they have 
commenced in the East, were it not for the bands of 
elderly spinsters and childless parents who have so 
little to do and so much spare time that they spend it 
in listening to the flowery speeches of the missionaries, 
or by themselves undertaking portions of this philan- 
thropic work. They are imposed on by these people, 
and leave large legacies to the societies (they seldom 
give during their lifetime). If it were not for these 
kind-hearted, much imposed-on people, missionary 
work would not be as lucrative as it is. Missionaries 
would then not be paid a salary in accordance with 
the size of their families — which in many cases is 
prodigious. 

It is absolutely sickening to return home and hear 
those people holding meetings, expounding on the 
hardships they have gone through, and enumerating 
the good they have done and the number of converts 
(are they ^) they have made. It is sickening to see 
the way they, by clever speeches, impose on their 



MISSIONARIES 163 

hearers, after one has seen their methods in those 
countries, seen the way they are loathed by the 
natives. The lies they tell them in order to obtain 
a convert ! Lies may sound a harsh word to use 
about a person who poses as a disciple of Christ, but 
the truth remains ; they do prevaricate. No means 
are unjustifiable so long as they gain their end. The 
topic of missionaries and their methods is a favourite 
one amongst all people, and arguments can be raised 
on all points involving their work. It is a topic 
which it is almost impossible to exhaust, so much 
can be argued on both sides, but probably more on 
the wrong than on the right side. The missionaries 
are men as a rule who, on account of their ignorance, 
are deemed unqualified to minister to the religious 
training of their own countrymen, and so are sent out 
to try what they can do with heathens. 

In the colonies the harm caused by these propa- 
gators of religion is not so great as in foreign coun- 
tries, because a large body of Europeans settle there 
and carry with them modern ideas and modern systems. 
They themselves teach the natives what they want 
them to learn, or else teach them nothing, and allow 
them to continue in their former semi-savage state. 
But wherever the missionary element is strong, the 



164 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

people are discontented ; and this is more felt in 
countries in the East where they have an old long- 
founded religion of their own than in countries where 
theology is less prominent, as amongst the Laplanders 
and Scandinavians. There the better type of mis- 
sionary may do good, and the people do, in many 
cases, embrace the Christian faith and derive comfort 
from it. 

The missionaries go to China and Japan and try 
to instil into those peoples a religion they do not 
understand. They tell them that unless they believe 
in the Christian God they will never be saved. They 
are astonished that the people rebel, that they refuse 
to believe and to give up their own sacred worship of 
Buddha, the god they have looked to for comfort and 
loved for thousands of years. 

What have the missionaries done for China ? They 
have caused the natives to rebel, they have been the 
means of forcing a war upon her, and one that they 
consider justifiable because of its religious aspect. 

The civilised world, at the same time as it sent 
out missionaries to China, built railways from the 
Treaty Ports inland to facilitate the transport of mer- 
chandise, and by that means placed thousands of 
Boxers, whose duty it was to carry the goods inland. 



TREATY PORTS 165 

out of work. The civilised world has sent out mis- 
sionaries, mostly narrow-minded, brainless fools, who 
go out with a Bible under one arm and the hope of 
lucrative remuneration under the other, to these 
countries to literally force our religion on the nation 
and then are surprised because that nation rises. They 
send armies there to subdue them, to subdue a nation 
that is merely fighting to retain its own sacred reli- 
gion. Let the civilised countries reorganise their 
missionary societies and send out doctors and men 
with brains who are capable of teaching the people to 
think as we do, to see things in the same light as we 
do, and then probably that nation will, when civilised 
to our standpoint, see things from our point of view ; 
then let the Churchmen go out and attempt to teach 
them the religion of Christ and the doctrines of 
Christianity. 

In Japan the result is the same, though the climax 
has not been reached — the sword has not been drawn. 
The Japanese have not yet been pressed to desperation, 
nor thought it feasible to attack the Embassies in 
Tokyo as the Chinese did in Pekin, which was the 
cause of the outbreak of the war with China. They 
are too clever for that. They hear with their 
ears and agree in words with what the mission- 



166 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

aries tell them, but directly the missionaries' backs 
are turned they enter one of their temples and pray 
to their own God. The missionaries imagine they 
have made a convert, and the next time they meet 
him he will agree with them, only, however, to laugh 
at them when they have gone. There are exceptions 
of course, and I should be sorry to suggest that some 
few hond fide converts are not to be found, or that 
some missionaries do not go out to these countries in 
the right spirit, but in both cases they are few and far 
between. 

The following story, though it does not illustrate 
the works of Japanese missionaries, is indicative of 
their methods, and will explain how incomprehensible 
their teachings are to the Buddhists. I was at a small 
island called Macao, close to Hongkong and a Portu- 
guese settlement, and walking along the main street 
met a Roman Catholic procession proceeding down the 
road. At the rear of the procession I was surprised to 
see about fifty Chinamen in surplices carrying candles 
and swinging incense, and asked the meaning of it from 
a Chinese chemist who was standing before his shop, and 
whether they were lond fide believers. My informant 
told me that they were only nominally converts, because 
they found out that unless they were baptized and 




To fact: p. 166 



25. A LODESTONE. 



WORSHIP OF IDOLS 167 

conformed to the wishes of the Roman Catholic com- 
munity, they had little chance of selling their goods. 
The priests informed them that unless they became 
converts no Catholics would ever come to their 
shops. To use my informant's own words, he said, 
" No believe, no can get pidgin," which is their term 
for business. The whole procession was to those men 
a mockery ; probably that same evening they entered 
one of their own temples and asked forgiveness of 
Buddha for forsaking him. 

The Buddhists worship idols, and are told by the 
missionaries that they sin and are read the Third 
Commandment, and still they see, drawn through the 
streets, figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary, priests 
in magnificent vestments standing under canopies 
richly hung with lace and strings of jewels, and pre- 
ceded by other priests bearing candles and swinging 
incense. How can these people possibly understand 
the difference between the worship of a graven image 
like Buddha, and their other gods and demigods, and 
these effigies of Christ and the Virgin Mary, when 
they see the people bowing to them and crossing them- 
selves .? How can they comprehend the meaning of 
this outward show when they are not permitted by the 
missionaries to indulge in it in their own religion ^ 



168 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

One of the chief reasons why the missionaries have 
been so unsuccessful is because they do not all belong 
to one sect. Though the religion of all is the same — 
Christian — it is divided into Roman Catholic, Greek- 
Orthodox, and Protestant, which is again subdivided 
into numerous denominations. All these various sects 
— though they embrace the same faith — are rivals to 
each other. How, then, can these so-called heathens 
believe when each of the different missionaries puts 
forward his denomination as the only true one ? 
After all, as Mr. Brownell in his book on Japan points 
out, the Buddhists are Buddhists for precisely the 
same reason that we are Christians — because their fore- 
fathers were so before them. The Japanese ask why 
the missionaries do not study Buddhism first, as their 
officials study Christianity, before going abroad. The 
missionaries do not understand the people, and yet 
expect them to comprehend the doctrines of a different 
religion. Ask a Buddhist why he does not become a 
Christian, and he will ask which denomination he is to 
believe in. In Japan the missionaries are tolerated, in 
China they are hated, and unless they try to study the 
people, learn their religion and the language, they can 
never hope to convert them. 

Every one knows that to a Chinaman his pigtail is 



CHINESE BUDDHISM 109 

something sacred ; if he has it cut off he can never re- 
turn to his country, and yet I have seen missionaries in 
Shanghai and other cities, fair-haired men, with long 
pigtails attached. They profane a Chinaman's most 
sacred possession, and still expect him to believe them. 
Their only excuse for donning this fancy dress is that 
the Chinese will more readily listen to them when they 
have a pigtail than when they are devoid of one. I 
have passed down streets in Shanghai and heard China- 
men curse these missionaries, as only a Chinaman can, 
as if they were dogs. The very sight of them is to the 
natives poison, and when they retaliate, to defend their 
god, by slaughtering a few of them, armies are sent 
over from Europe to fight them and subdue them. 
Suppose a band of Buddhist priests were to land in 
London and go amongst the poorer classes in the East 
End. The whole city would be in arms against them 
at once if they attempted to preach their religion to 
us, ind yet what knowledge have we except the belief 
in the faith and teachings of our forefathers that our 
religion is the only true one .'' The Buddhists believe 
in their own religion, but do not try and force it down 
the throats of others. 

The missionaries, instead of trying to Introduce 
their religion first amongst the richer people, the nobles 



170 MISSIONAKIES AND RELIGION 

and those in authority, at once start on the mob, the 
rifFrafF of the country, men who are absolutely unedu- 
cated, though history has told us the futility of such 
a proceeding. When Buddhism was first introduced 
into Japan, vid Korea, the missionaries started by 
trying to convert the Emperor. The priests brought 
over an image of Buddha as a present to the Emperor 
Kimmei from the Korean King. When it was first 
introduced into China from India it was unsuccessful. 
The second time the Emperor of China, about a.d. 
50, sent to India to inquire into the powers of 
Buddha, and when the messengers returned accom- 
panied by Buddhist priests the sovereign accepted the 
faith, and after him his advisers, until the whole nation 
embraced the same religion. 

Every nation has a faith — a religion. The one 
may be finer and more in consistence with our ideas 
than another, but why not try to teach those nations 
the principles of living a Christian life first .? The 
word Christian may and does now mean more than a 
belief in Christ. It is used in a general sense in 
which a Jew or a Buddhist can be a good Christian. 
It means also acting up to the teachings of Christ, 
walking in His footsteps, leading the life He led, 
doing good, relieving the sufferings of the poor, heal- 



CONVERTS 171 

ing the sick ; and all these examples of what we term 
Christianity are practised also, though possibly not to 
the same extent, by nations we call heathens. 

If the missionaries were to leave out the word 
religion from their teachings they would find their 
work much easier. If they first assisted the people to 
lead better lives, taught the Chinese cleanlier habits, 
showed them how to work so as to make their labour 
more productive, their converts would be more numer- 
ous and themselves more tolerated. It is merely by 
trying to teach them something they do not under- 
stand that they become rebellious, but by slow degrees, 
without the aid of religion, the missionaries — provided 
the right men go out there — will be able to accomplish 
great things, and when the time is ripe, and the people 
understand us and our methods, the missionaries will 
be able to teach them our religion. 

Every nation has had a faith of its own at one 
period of its history, and in almost every case when 
the missionaries have gone out to that country to teach 
them Christianity the result has been a massacre ; 
nowadays the missionaries are the first to be killed, 
formerly in the time of the Crusaders the heathens 
were the slaughtered ones. One cannot help admiring 
the missionaries for this unending perseverance. They 



172 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

visit these countries with the certain knowledge that 
any day may be their last. It is interesting to examine 
for a moment the history of Christianity in other 
countries. Take, for example, the Incas of Peru or 
the Aztecs of Mexico, who both worshipped what they 
saw, the sun ; they knew no other god, but feeling the 
benefit of the sun's rays, and observing how under the 
influence of the sun the flowers grew and the crops 
flourished, they fell down and worshipped the sun. 
What was the result of the Spanish invasions under 
Pizarro and Cortes — men who went out professing to 
carry the banner of Christ — subjects of the greatest 
Christian kingdom in the world .? A wholesale 
massacre, bloodshed such as has never before or since 
been known, cavalry and sword against a defenceless 
nation, a Christian people against unarmed farmers 
and heathens, plunder right and left ; and why ? to 
propagate the gospel was the answer. Is that Chris- 
tian ^ and yet people say, '* Oh, that was when 
Europe was less civilised." Europe was as much 
civilised then as China is now, but simply because 
the tables are turned, and the missionaries, instead 
of the heathens, are the first to be killed, a war is 
justifiable. 

In Shanghai I was told of a missionary up-country 



THEIR METHODS 173 

who had made a few converts, and who wrote to his 
society at home asking for further funds to build a 
church. Money was forthcoming and sent out, and 
he wrote back saying he had built a church, and that 
with the few remaining bricks he had built himself a 
humble dwelling. The truth was that the church 
turned out to be a wooden barn, a mere apology for a 
church, a sort of cowshed, and the humble dwelling 
was a palatial stone residence. Statistics show that 
it costs nearly ;^iooo to convert a Chinaman, and then 
people say it is cheap at the price. In Japan, no 
doubt, the figure can be put very much lower, but 
then the Japanese are a nation who will more readily 
conform to anything new. They delight in novelty. 
They are anxious to learn anything which they imagine 
will benefit them, but at present say they are so busy 
learning all the other European methods that they 
have no time to turn their attention to religion. The 
Japanese have never been a nation as wrapt up in their 
religions as China has been, and so do not feel to the 
same degree the shame of laying it aside, but that 
does not mean that they will as readily embrace 
another, and the consequence is that in Japan thousands 
of people to-day have no belief at all beyond the belief 
of an agnostic. In Europe the same state is becoming 



174 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

every year more prominent. People of Europe as 
they become more civilised think, more, and as a 
natural consequence take things less for granted. 
They think out the religion of their forefathers, and 
seeing some fallacies they cannot explain away, become 
what is now termed agnostics. The same state of things 
has taken place in Japan, where, prior to the civilisa- 
tion of the country, they were either Shintoists or 
Buddhists, the religion of their forefathers. They 
now have become agnostics owing entirely to their not 
liking to embrace a new faith about which they under- 
stand so little. 

Ask a Japanese whether he is a Shintoist or a 
Buddhist, and he will look at you in blank amaze- 
ment ; he has not got a notion to which he belongs ; 
all he knows is that after his birth he was presented 
at a Shinto temple, and that on his death he will be 
buried by a Buddhist priest. Beyond that knowledge 
he cares very little to which religion he belongs, or 
even whether he belongs to any at all. In neither 
religion are the priests bound by any vows of celibacy, 
and their wives become priestesses ; but their duties 
do not embrace any religious teaching, they merely 
perform the more arduous task of dancing, singing, 
and going through pantomimic tricks to please the 



FILIAL PIETY 175 

gods. The greatest religious law of the Buddhists 
is to learn the duties they owe to their parents and 
ancestors. Whilst their parents are alive they owe 
them everything ; and when dead they go on appointed 
days to their graves, pray to them, and take gifts of 
food in the same way as the ancient Egyptians used 
to place urns with spices and food in the tombs of 
their kings. The idea apparently is that the soul 
is more than something spiritual, and requires sus- 
tenance. When the missionaries see these Chinamen 
praying to or for the souls of their ancestors, they 
think it is a form of worship, and remonstrate with 
them about it, whereas it is no more than a prayer 
to their particular god of the dead to receive the 
soul of the departed. 

In Japan the filial piety takes rather a different 
form. They do not, as in China, visit the graves 
of their dead to the same extent ; but during the 
lives of their parents no hardship is too great for 
them to bear if they can alleviate in any way the 
burdens of their parents. 

In conjunction with this filial piety, and to show 
the length to which it is carried, the Yoshiwara in 
Tokyo is worth mentioning, and similar institutions 
throughout the country. A woman will sell herself 



176 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

into vice to save her parents from debt or disgrace. 
She does so perhaps merely for a few pounds. She 
sells herself to some one who keeps a house in the 
Yoshiwara, and they pay the parents the necessary 
amount. When it has been worked off, the daughter 
returns to her home — not, ^ in Europe, a person to 
be shunned by her friends, but a respectable member 
of society again, who has offered her body to pay 
her parents' debts. Girls of the best families in 
Japan, as well as of the worst, go to these places, 
and nothing is thought of it. 

More fuss and scandal has been caused about 
these places by missionaries and Europeans than 
about anything else in the country, and why .? Because 
the missionaries look upon it from the point of view 
of gross immorality, whilst the Japanese do not con- 
sider the slavery to which they subject their daughters 
from the moral standpoint at all. Morality is, after 
all, a wide term, and differs in every country. 

If the missionaries were to investigate the morality 
in their own countries a little more ; if they were to 
attend to the East End of London — where there is 
plenty of work for all the missionaries if they want 
to look for it — or see that the women of their own 
countries received the proper supervision as they do 



MORALITY 177 

in Japan, instead of going to those countries, where, 
in the place of reducing immorality they increase it, 
by pointing out the difference between the two ; if 
they, in fact, were to leave every nation to guard 
her own morals, they might be more popular, and 
would certainly do much more good. There is pro- 
bably no country in the world where the morals of 
the people were higher than in Japan before the 
missionaries and European lay people went there ; 
and now, after perhaps only twenty years of real 
civilisation, the country has become spoilt. The 
reputation of the women has become known to the 
world, and through no fault of their own. 

I fear that I have said much on this subject that 
will call forth a shower of abuse, and it may be that 
my remarks deserve the criticism they may get ; but 
these are my convictions, and have not been written 
with the intention of hurting the feelings of any 
person. I must borrow the words of the author of 
the " Letters of John Chinaman," and say that if I 
have offended I am sorry ; but if it is the truth that 
offends, then I can offer and make no apology. 

So little do the Japanese trouble about religion 
that to this day, after a period of nearly five hundred 
years, their Buddhist prayers are still written in Chinese 



M 



178 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

characters ; they have never even taken the trouble 
to have them transcribed. The oldest form of re- 
ligion in Japan is Shinto, which is a mixture of nature 
and ancestor worship. It has thousands of gods and 
goddesses of the wind, sea, rivers, trees, and moun- 
tains, which are again subdivided into gods of certain 
rivers, trees, and mountains — and the whole bundle 
are called the Kami. The chief is the sun goddess, 
Ama-terasu, who was born from the left eye of 
Izanagi whilst he was washing himself in a stream. 
The moon god, according to the ancient legend, came 
from his right eye ; and the god Susa-no-o, the storm 
god, was born from his nose. From every article of 
clothing that Izanagi took off a deity was said to have 
sprung. Ama-terasu is said to be the ancestress from 
whom all the Emperors of Japan have been descended. 
Her shrine is at Ise : and she is, in consequence of 
having given birth to the royal line of the Mikados, 
honoured above all the rest. 

The Shinto religion has no written dogmas or moral 
code, and the people originally used to pay homage 
to the gods for much the same reason that they wor- 
ship the Mikado — merely because they were taught 
that obedience to both was expected of them. If a 
man did wrong his sins were forgiven if he only 



SHINTO TEMPLES 179 

purified himself in water. They had no idea of an 
after world, although the continued existence of the 
dead was to some extent believed in. After the 
introduction of Buddhism the Shinto religion be- 
came amalgamated with the Buddhist religion — the 
priests received the Shinto gods as ancestors of the 
Buddhas ; and so, although Buddhism became the 
prominent religion, Shintoism was still practised at 
Court, and the rituals were put into writing. 

The Shinto temples are simplicity itself in com- 
parison to those dedicated to Buddha, consisting 
merely of plain wooden buildings devoid of carving 
or gold lacquer work. The furniture of a Shinto 
temple consists of a mirror, which is placed in a con- 
spicuous position, and beyond that hardly anything 
is seen. In another chamber the sword and jewel are 
kept, and in former years the virgin daughter of the 
Mikado was left in the Temple of ]se to watch over 
these relics, supposed to have been left him by Ama- 
terasu. The mirror is considered the emblem of 
purity, and no idol of any kind is visible within the 
sacred shrine. In front of every Shinto temple 
stands the torii, sometimes of wood, stone, or bronze ; 
and this was the sign by which to distinguish the 
Shinto from the Buddhist temples. The torii is 



180 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

formed of two upright and two horizontal beams. 
Sometimes whole avenues of them exist, but as a rule 
one will be placed at the beginning of a row of 
cryptomeria trees, and another at the end in front 
of the temple. These torii were later used also for 
Buddhist temples, and had signs and inscriptions fixed 
on to them ; but when the Shinto religion was revived 
in its purer form about i860, these inscriptions 
were removed. The Shinto temples are all thatched, 
while the Buddhists tile the roofs of their places of 
worship. A Shinto temple seldom stands alone, num- 
bers of other smaller temples and houses surround it, 
and these are either dedicated to minor gods, or are 
used by the priests as dwelling-houses. It is curious 
to watch the worship in a Shinto temple. The 
worshipper commences by pulling violently at a rope 
suspended from the roof, and ringing a large bell. 
He then kneels on a piece of matting in front of the 
mirror, and starts clapping his hands violently. All 
this is done in order to arouse the gods that may be 
sleeping ; and having to his own satisfaction made 
sufficient noise, he commences his prayers, first kneel- 
ing, then rising and kneeling again. He seems quite 
oblivious of any noise or talking that may be going 
on around him ; and at times even children use the 



THE CREATOR OF JAPAN 181 

temple as a playground or shelter from rain. The 
whole duty which a Shintoist seems to owe to his 
religion is attending worship on certain festal days, 
and pilgrimages to the Temple of Ise. He is sup- 
posed to keep his heart inwardly pure, and abstain 
from whatever makes him impure. The Shinto 
temples are called mia, and the Buddhist temples tera. 

It is probably due to the Shintoists' disbelief in 
an after world or existence that the people of Japan, 
unsatisfied with that state of things, have adopted 
burial according to the Buddhist belief. They evi- 
dently feel that something must happen to the soul 
after death, and so accept burial at the hands of a 
Buddhist priest, though they were at their birth pre- 
sented to a Shinto goddess. At most of the Shinto 
temples Buddhist priests officiate, and it is only at the 
great temples of Ise and Izumo that they have their 
own religious instructors. 

To sum up the Shinto religion, then, it will be 
seen that it is based purely on mythological legends, 
shrouded in the mystery of the Creation of Japan, 
whose Creator was Izanagi. For hundreds of years 
its rituals were handed down from mouth to mouth. 
The Ryobu Shinto, as distinguished from pure Shinto, 
arose in consequence of the introduction of Buddhist 



182 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

priests into Shinto temples, who brought with them 
much of the ornamental carving, and practised many 
of the Buddhist ceremonies. Some people go so far 
as to declare that the Shinto religion is too mean, 
fabulous, and contemptible to be worthy even of 
mention. It is interesting to read Will Adams's 
views on the religion of Japan recorded in one of his 
letters, and written in 1614. He writes: "The 
peopell in thear relligion are veri zellous, or svpersti- 
cious, hauing diuers secttes, but praying all them 
secttes, or the most part, to on saynt, which they call 
Ameeda, which they esteem to bee their mediator 
between God and them : all these secttes liuing in 
friendship on with an other, but everi on as his 
conscience teacheth. In this land are manny Chris- 
tians according to ye Romische order. In the year 
1 6 1 2 is put downe all the secttes of the Franciscannes. 
The Jesouets hau what priuiledge theare beinge in 
Nangasaki, in which place only may be so many as will 
of all secttes : in other places not manny permitted." 

Buddhism was first introduced into Japan from 
Korea, ambassadors being sent from there with a gold 
image of Buddha and some written pamphlets as 
a present to the Emperor Kimmei. This was 
about A.D. 500, The Emperor was impressed by the 




■, ..r^0i^ 



Hittm 



S()(;y\ NO INAMK 188 

words of the amhassiulors, :iiul decided to give the 
new religion ;i chiincc, thougli his advisers, who 
feared offending llie Kami, wc-re much against it. The 
only person who favoured this new (iod, besides llie 
Emperor, was Soga-no-lname, the Mikado's |)rimc 
minister, and so the image was deposited in that 
worthy person's garden, and his house transformed 
into the first Buddhist temple. Misfortune hap|)ened 
in the form of a pestilence, and of course liuddha had 
to bear the blame. The Mmperor's advisers, other 
than Soga-no-Iname, attributed the outbreak of this 
fever to the Golden image, and it was j)romptly 
consigned to a watery grave, and the temple, the 
minister's country seat, devastated. The Korean 
missionaries, after they saw that worse calamities 
befell Japan, came over again with the excuse that 
they were due to the profanity with which liuddha 
had been treated ; so that the Mikado repented his 
act, had the temple rebuilt, and the Oolden Image 
reinstated. From that day Buddhism was received 
with favour. 

When Buddhism arrived in Ja|)an, it was already 
split up into numbers of sects. Originating in India, 
it had travelled through Ceylon into China, where it 
had a hundred years in which to be brc^ken up. The 



184 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

chief aim of the Buddhists seems to be a striving after 
Nirvana, in which the thinking principle, after numer- 
ous transmigrations, is saved from the evils of exist- 
ence. The personal name of Buddha is Siddhartha, 
who was the son of Gautama, King of Kapilavastu. 
At an early age he wandered for seven years in the 
Himalaya wilderness, denying himself everything, 
living the life of an anchorite, and continually in 
search of the truth. 

According to the Buddhistic legend, a woman, who 
after many years of married life eventually gave birth 
to a child, and meeting Siddhartha footsore and weary 
from his travels and famished from want of food, 
realised that he was some god through whose power 
she had been enabled to give birth to her offspring, and 
presented him with a bowl of milk. That night the 
Truth was revealed to him whilst he was sitting be- 
neath a tree. The growth of Buddhism and down- 
fall of Brahminism was then only a matter of time. 
Thousands flocked to him, and were told the way to 
live. The kings joined his fold ; and Buddha, jour- 
neying from place to place, spread the doctrines of 
this new faith. 

In Japan Buddhism remained unacknowledged 
amongst the mass for about fifty years. About thirty 



NIRVANA 185 

years after its introduction, Soga-no-Iname, the minis- 
ter who had first embraced it, built a pagoda ; but it 
is due to Shotoku Taishi, the Prince Regent after the 
death of the Emperor Kimmei, that Buddhism be- 
came almost an established religion. He built many 
temples all over the country, and some of the most 
celebrated ones. Though many sects of Buddhism 
were introduced into Japan, many others have sprung 
up since ; but the new ones never entirely superseded 
the old, and consequently the Tendai and Shingon 
sects still survive. Though the sects may differ as 
regards worship, forms of ritual, and temple decora- 
tions, the doctrine of Nirvana remains the same in all, 
and is the height to which all Buddhists aspire. 

Sir Ernest Satow, whose word on that religion can, 
from his profound study of the subject, be taken as 
authentic, says: "The entirety of doctrine, however, 
results in one central truth, namely, that Nirvina is 
the final result of existence, a state in which the 
thinking substance, while remaining individual, is un- 
affected by anything external, and is consequently 
devoid of feeling, thought, or passion. To this the 
name of Mu-i is given, signifying absolute, uncondi- 
tional existence. When this is spoken of as annihilation, 
it is annihilation of conditions, not of the substance, 



186 MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION 

that is meant. Pushed to its logical result, this would 
appear to the ignorant to amount to the same thing 
as non-existence ; but here we are encountered by one 
of those mysteries which lie at the foundation of all 
religious belief, and which must be accepted without 
questioning, if there is to be any spiritual religion 
at all." 

The question still remains unanswered : Will the 
Japanese ever embrace Christianity? Much depends 
on those teachers of religion who visit the country. 
If they start in the right quarter and abide their time, 
the answer is probably Yes ; but if they continue 
as they have begun, no satisfactory result will ever 
be attained. Mr. Arthur Di6sy, in his " New Far 
East," has prophesied a great future for Japan, 
and maintains that some time soon she will em- 
brace the Christian religion, but goes on to say 
that she will invent a form of her own. After he 
has asked the question as to whether the nation will 
profess Christianity, he goes on to say : *' Not yours, 
dear reader, whatever sect or denomination you may 
belong to. . . . The Japanese will never enter the 
fold of a religion whose pontiff is enthroned in Rome, 
Bishop Nikoloi . . . will never induce the majority of 
the Japanese to adopt a creed whose Supreme Head on 



JAPANESE CHRISTIANITY 187 

earth is the Tsar. . . . Nor will the Japanese enter in 
union with a Church whose chief Primate's See is at 
Canterbury. . . . The Japanese will, in time, profess 
Christianity, but it will be Christianity of a Japanese 
pattern." Should any missionary ever deem this book 
worth reading, I hope he will treat me leniently in his 
scathing criticism. I am ready, and even willing to 
bear it, if the result has any effect upon the future 
workings of his society. 



CHAPTER X 

THE TEMPLES AND THEIR GODS 

" Nikko wo minas uchi wa, 
'i^epko ' to ni na ! " 

This is the Japanese proverb exhorting people hot 
to use the word magnificent until they have seen 
Nikko. It is the centre of Buddhist and Shinto 
worship, temples one mass of gold and carving, 
a river, the Daiya-gawa, flowing from the hills be- 
yond Yumoto, through Lake Chuzengi, and thence 
through the sacred town of Nikko. The town, with 
its hotels, quaint houses, and picturesque people, 
occupies the land on one side of the river, whilst 
the other is devoted to the temples. Nikko is the 
home of the gods, the resting-place of saints of days 
gone by, its river crossed by the sacred red bridge 
across which none are permitted to pass. Blood-red 
the bridge stands shining in the sun, its polished 
wood studded with gold, torrents of water rushing 
beneath it, foam lashing against the dark red wood. 
Below, a green bridge over which the people pass ; 



TOMB OF lEYASU 189 

in the distance, towering above the temples, a pagoda, 
five-storied, emblazoned with gold and red, its lower 
storey carved with figures representing the twelve 
divisions of the Zodiac or Ecliptic, namely, Aries, 
Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, 
Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces. Be- 
neath it a stone torii^ before the gateway of Yomei- 
mon leading to the temple of Yakushi ; in the 
distance the tomb of leyasu. There are avenues 
of cryptomerias on either side of the road leading to 
the temples, each tree rising straight towards the sky. 
The legend of the sacred red bridge is that Shodo 
Shonin, a saint who built the first Buddhist temple 
at Nikko, whilst on a pilgrimage, reached the river 
Daiya-gawa and found it impassable ; so he prayed 
to Buddha for help, when a divine figure appeared 
suddenly on the opposite bank, dressed in blue and 
black robes, who, seeing his trouble, offered to help 
him, and threw two green and blue snakes across the 
river. Instantly a long bridge sprang up, over which 
Shodo Shonin crossed ; but directly he gained the 
other side both the god and the bridge disappeared. 
The bridge was originally built in 1638, and has 
gates at each end, through which none but the 
Mikado himself is allowed to pass. 



190 TEMPLES AND THEIR GODS 

Crossing the ordinary bridge the temples stand 
out in all their glory, one mass of colouring, rich 
with gold. An avenue of cryptomerias indicates 
the direction to be taken, the dark leaves of these 
colossal trees blending beautifully with the rich 
colouring of the temples ; and there in front, be- 
yond the stone torii^ stands the temple of Yakushi 
with its wonderful gate. This gate is painted white 
and gold. On either side are long carved panels — 
on the left, birds ; on the right, flowers. The birds 
and flowers are cut so deep that they appear to stand 
out from the background, which is red lacquer, and 
are painted in their correct colours. On either side 
of the gate, in recesses, are two huge tigers, whose 
markings are the natural grain of the wood. In the 
courtyard before the gate are numbers of stone 
lanterns, in which lights are placed on high festivals. 
The interior of the temple is one mass of gold, 
the floor spotlessly white. A dim religious light 
pervades the whole, scantily illuminating the carvings 
and gold lacquer work, part of which is kept covered, 
so that the action of light should not cause it to 
fade. In front of the altar a few persons sit praying, 
whilst priests squat in front of them, chanting their 
liturgies and beating on wooden drums. The magni- 



MIYAJIMA 191 

ficence of these temples is beyond conception, rich, 
and still harmonious in its colouring. Outside, 
are wonderful avenues of cryptomerias, with their 
olive green leaves and almost black bark. Nikko 
itself is a temple town, but beyond this it affords 
a charm of scenery unsurpassed in any other por- 
tion of the country. The only pity about Japanese 
temples is that they are nearly all alike; some may 
differ in the number of deities worshipped or in the 
outward structure of the temples, but beyond a few 
minor differences they are all the same. 

One of the most picturesque temples in Japan is 
at Miyajima, on the inland sea. Its grandeur can- 
not be compared with any of the Nikko or Kioto 
temples, but it is the absolute lack of colour which 
makes it so fascinating. The torii is built out into 
the sea, and the temple itself on piles, so that 
at high tide the whole looks as if it were a 
floating mass. It cannot be approached except from 
the back when the tide is up, and the interior is 
devoid of any signs of magnificence. A few very 
old pictures by celebrated ancient artists, and some 
modern daubs depicting scenes from the China war, 
are about all that can be seen inside the temple. 
Any deficiencies, however, in the interior are fully 



192 TEMPLES AND THEIR GODS 

compensated for by the perfection of the exterior. 
There are ten smaller and larger temples together, 
facing the sea. Behind, the hills of the island rise, 
a thickly wooded mass of vegetation, abounding in 
various kinds of animals, which, on account of the 
island being sacred, may never be killed. On either 
side of the temple stand rows of stone lanterns which, 
when lit, reflect their light in the sea, the temple 
itself mirrored in the water as clear as if the sea 
were a looking-glass. In the distance a few pictur- 
esque houses with tame deer wandering round, or 
coming to be fed ; others cooling themselves in 
the water. The absolute stillness of the island 
on the calm spring evening when I was there, 
together with the novelty of a floating temple, illu- 
minated and reflected in the sea, the deer, unheeding 
any person who passed them, forced one to think 
whether all this could be real or whether it was only 
a dream. It is real, and the most wonderful sight 
imaginable. It is a wonder beyond conception, be- 
cause of the lack of usual gold and highly perfected 
carving, which is so characteristic of most of the 
Japanese temples. Its great charm lies in the sim- 
plicity of its construction. 

The gods of Japan are so numerous that it is 



IZANAGI 193 

hard to know where to begin, and harder still 
where to end. Out of about a million deities, all 
more or less important, it is almost impossible to give 
an adequate description by choosing a few. 

The greatest of all is the Shinto goddess Ama- 
terasu. Sprung from the left eye of Izanagi, from 
whom Japan is supposed to have originated, she is 
said to have given birth to the first Mikado. The 
Sun goddess after a quarrel with her brother the 
Storm god, retired into a cave and plunged the 
world into total darkness until she was enticed forth 
again. So sacred is she held, that one of her images 
at Ise may only be seen by the Mikado and some 
of the highest priests in the land. This image, en- 
veloped in a sack, was formerly the sacred charge 
of the virgin daughter of the Emperor. It was 
once seen by a high official, but one who had no 
right to enter the sacred precincts where it was 
kept, and who, in consequence of his sacrilege, was 
stabbed by a young Tokyo gentleman. The murderer 
became a saint, but the high official who had 
so wrongfully entered the sacred chamber was soon 
forgotten. The Sun goddess has her chief shrine 
at Ise in the province of Shima, and her image 
is kept in a box of chamaecyparis wood, whilst 



N 



194 TEMPLES AND THEIR GODS 

the mirror, the emblem of Shintoism, is preserved 
in a silk bag. When this bag becomes old it 
is not removed and another substituted, but a new 
one is stitched over the old one. The legend says 
that Ama - terasu, when she plunged the earth in 
darkness by hiding in the cave, caught an image of 
her beauty in a mirror which her enticers held before 
her, and being enraptured at the sight of her own 
face, came out again. 

The Temple of Ise is extremely plain in architec- 
ture, and an example of the pure Shinto type of 
building. Plain white wood unadorned with carving 
and paint. 

Amida is the next god to attract one. Seated 
with his hands clasped and lying in his lap, he looks 
supremely pensive, with a smile on his lips. In the 
centre of his forehead he has a spot showing where 
wisdom lies. His feet are crossed, the soles turned 
up, and the whole figure surrounded by a halo of 
gold. 

At Kamakura stands an image of this deity 
called the Daibutsu, or Great Buddha, the finest 
work of art in Japan. It is made entirely of bronze, 
hollowed out so that one can go inside. It is fifty 
feet high and proportionately broad, and the eyes 



THE GREAT BUDDHA 195 

are pure gold. The peaceful expression on the face 
is wonderful. At first sight it is difficult to take 
in the whole, it is too overpowering, and like the 
Sphinx in Egypt should be seen time after time in 
order to get the correct impression. Professor 
Chamberlain writes of this statue: "The impression 
it produces grows on the beholder each time that 
he gazes afresh at the calm, intellectual, passionless 
face, which seems to concentrate in itself the whole 
philosophy of the Buddhist religion — the triumph 
of mind over sense, of eternity over fleeting time, 
of the enduring majesty of Nirvana over the trivial 
prattle, the transitory agitations of mundane exist- 
ence." That idea of calm is symbolical of the Bud- 
dhist theory — that in order to attain the height after 
which every Buddhist strives, passions must be fore- 
gone, pleasures relinquished, and life itself must be 
shrouded in a veil of purity. 

Amida is called " The Boundless Light," and as 
such has a halo [funa-goko) encompassing in many cases 
the whole body, symbolising his widespread radiance. 

The children's playmate, Hotei — one of the seven 
Gods of Luck distinguished by his look of con- 
tentment — a fat, plump, jolly god, with crossed legs 
and hands, is sufficient to inspire any child with trust. 



196 TEMPLES AND THEIR GODS 

His pleased look and bright shining eyes make the 
children believe him to be a suitable companion to 
join them in their romps. Close to him sits Kishi 
Bojin, the goddess who guards the young boys 
and girls. Children bring toys and dolls with which 
they adorn their protectress. Originally she was a 
sworn enemy of children, and used to devour (in 
theory) any that came in her vicinity, until she was 
converted by Buddha, and became their best friend. 
She represents *' beauty " with a child in her lap, 
and mothers who have been deprived of their babies 
and women who have no offspring, come to her for 
comfort. They tie baby bibs and clothes round her 
neck and worship her as the mediator between the god 
who deprives children of life and the giver of breath. 
In her hand she holds a pomegranate, which is also 
her crest. 

An amusing deity is Koshin of Chinese origin, who 
in Japanese is called Sam biki-zaru — the three monkeys. 
These three represent the deaf, dumb, and blind, and 
are called Kika-zaru, Iwa-zaru, and Mi-zaru respectively. 
The idea is that they have eyes but see not, ears but 
hear not, and mouths but speak not evil. You can say 
anything and still remain assured that Koshin or Sam 
biki-zaru will not allow it to go any further. Koshin 



THE THREE MONKEYS 197 

is no scandalmonger or tell-tale, and for that reason as 
popular as any deity in Japan. The figures of the 
monkeys sit, the one covering his eyes with his hands, 
the second shutting his ears, and the third with his 
hands closely pressed over his mouth. 

One hears so much about the superstition of Bud- 
dhists that I should like to justify that religion by draw- 
ing what appears to me a parallel between Buddhism and 
Christianity as practised by Roman Catholics. The 
Japanese have a god they call Binzuru, the Healer of 
the Sick. His image is usually placed outside the 
temples, because one day when some ladies were passing 
him, he unfortunately remarked upon their beauty in 
the hearing of some of his fellow deities and was 
reported to Buddha. On this account he was made to 
sit outside the chancel, but Buddha gave him the 
power to heal the sick and infirm as a recompense 
for this disadvantage. Binzuru is one of the most 
popular deities, especially amongst the lower classes, 
who adorn his body with all manner of garments, 
and put mittens on his hands to keep them warm. 
Poor Binzuru ! now little is left of him owing to the 
rain to which he has been subjected for so many 
years ; his arms and face are worn away. If a man has 
a broken thigh or sore head, he approaches Binzuru, 



198 TEMPLES AND THEIR GODS 

and after running his hand over that deity's thigh or 
head, applies it straight to his own, and so is cured, 
or at any rate believes he is. How does this form of 
superstition differ from that practised at Lourdes, or 
the walking up the Santa Scala at Rome ? Thousands 
of pilgrims go to Lourdes to be healed, and as many 
climb the holy stairs at Rome in the firm belief that 
they will be cured if such is the divine will. Thousands 
of Buddhists rub Binzuru every year, and also believe 
their ailments are cured. I have seen infirm men with 
bent back approach that deity and walk away straight 
again — a proof of what an effective medicine imagina- 
tion is ; and yet I have heard Roman Catholics pity 
them for their childlike superstition. Surely Binzuru 
is as effective a cure to them as a pilgrimage to Lourdes 
is to the Roman Catholics .? I quote the words of 
Major Knollys, R.A., when he describes Japan in his 
" Sketches of Life " as being " nearly all enslaved in 
childish superstition or debased by senseless scepti- 
cism." Later he goes on to say that the Buddhists 
"in nineteen cases out of twenty are rascally, hypo- 
critical, with a tinge of craven superstition." And 
again, that they are " driven by stress of suffering 
to seek relief even from an obscene Buddha." What 
must the Japanese think of Christianity when they 



n 



JAPANESE SUPERSTITION 199 

read how their gods and religion are profaned by 
Christians themselves ? 

Binzuru has a great rival in popularity, Jiz5, who 
is Compassion. He is the helper of all who are in 
trouble, not necessarily with bodily ailments, but also 
the comforter of those who are in sorrow. He is not 
unlike Amida, except that he has his head shaved, and 
holds in one hand the jewel and in the other a staff 
with six metal rings — shakujo. In the centre of his 
forehead he has the same spot as " The Boundless 
Light.*' His lap is often filled with small pebbles, the 
legend being that children when they die are seized by 
Shozuka-no-Baba, an old woman who lives on the 
banks of the Styx, and after being divested of their 
clothes, are made to pile up stones on the banks of the 
Sai no Kawara, a river on the opposite side of the Styx, 
until Jizo comes to help them. So, children and mothers 
deposit stones in his lap when they pass him to relieve 
the dead souls of the children, the idea being that each 
stone deposited will relieve a child at Sai no Kawara of 
part of his toil. 

Another god greatly to be pitied is Daruma, who 
sat for nine years in contemplation until his legs 
dropped off. Legend says that once he got so tired 
that he went to sleep, and when he awoke was so 



200 TEMPLES AND THEIR GODS 

annoyed that he cut ofF his eyelids, because they had 
closed, and flung them to the ground. There they 
took root, and produced plants, the leaves of which he 
picked, and after placing them in water, drank the 
beverage and never went to sleep again. This plant is 
supposed to be the tea shrub according to this legend. 
Fudo and Emma-o are enough to terrify even the 
bravest. The former, seated on a throne surrounded 
by flames of fire, carries in his right hand a sword to 
terrify sinners, and in his left hand he holds a coil of 
rope with which to make the wrong-doers prisoners. 
He is called the God of Wisdom, though he resembles 
far more a God of Fire. His companion, Emma-o, 
is equally terrible to look at. He is regent of the 
Buddhist Hades, who judges the dead when they visit 
his region, and is attended by two scribes with paint- 
brush and parchment ; the one takes down a record of 
every soul that comes before him, whilst the other 
reads out their offences. Emma-o judges them accord- 
ing to their deserts. He carries a sword in his right 
hand, and his left is raised demanding silence, whilst 
on his head he wears a peculiar crown. 

The weirdest to look at are the seven Gods of Luck, 
"Shichi Fukujin," who are Ebisu, the patron of labour, 
whose image adorns the bottles of one brand of Japanese 



THE "SHICHI FUKUJIN" 201 

beer; Daikoku, the God of Wealth, who is always 
seated surrounded by bales of rice; Benten, a lady 
who plays the samisen^ but sometimes is represented 
riding on a snake or dragon. Fukurokuju has an 
extraordinarily long head and beard, and a hat like a 
sou'wester on his head, and his left arm encircles the 
neck of a crane with a red breast. Bishamon, who is 
in China one of the Gods of Wealth, is depicted with 
a spear in his left hand, and clad in armour ready to 
go out to battle, and in his right hand he holds a 
pagoda. Jurokujin sits holding a shepherd's crook in 
one hand, whilst the other rests on the head of a stag. 
He, like Fukurokuju, also has a long beard, and cap 
like the parapet of a castle. Last comes the jovial 
Hotei, who, to look at, is amusing, though not beautiful. 
He is so fat that he is propped up by a large sack at 
his back, and in his right hand he holds a fan with 
which to cool himself in hot weather. He is lightly 
clad, to say the least of it, and beyond a cloth loosely 
cast over his shoulders, finds his flesh sufficient to keep 
him warm. 

Of all the gods of the Buddhists and Shintoists, 
none have so many various forms as the Goddess of 
Mercy, Kwannon by name. Sometimes she has four 
heads and eight arms, and each hand carries something 



202 TEMPLES AND THEIR GODS 

different. Other images represent her with the head 
of an animal, or with one thousand arms and hands, 
each holding out a different emblem of mercy, some 
herb or flower, a knife for surgical operations or 
balsam for healing wounds. Her two hands, which 
are folded in her lap, hold the jar of the mendicant 
priest. Kwannon is the owner of the Nyo-i-rin, the gem 
which is supposed to give the possessor of it every- 
thing he desires, and she has twenty-eight followers, 
Ni-ju-hachi Bushu, to wait upon her, who are the 
personification of the twenty-eight Japanese constella- 
tions. For each of her forms she has a different 
name, thus when she has one thousand hands she is 
called Sen-ju Kwannon ; when she holds the gem she 
is known as Nyo-i-rin Kwannon ; when she is depicted 
with four faces and eight hands she receives the name 
of Ba-to Kwannon, Horse-headed Kwannon. 

Every god in Japan has a particular meaning, and 
though the temples have sometimes many hundreds 
in each, they have all a significance to those who 
worship them. To the Japanese the belief in the 
healing powers of Binzuru, or the comfort they receive 
in the worship of Kwannon, is no superstition any 
more than is the Roman Catholic belief in a pilgrim- 
age to Lourdes. It is natural that we should consider 



CATHOLIC SUPERSTITION 203 

much of the Buddhist religion superstitious, but they 
consider ours equally so. It seems unfair to deride the 
Buddhist superstition merely because it is incompre- 
hensible to a broader-minded person, or to one who 
has no superstitious belief, and yet Christians will pity 
if they do not mock at such scepticism. 

The Buddhist temples are far more extravagantly 
adorned than the churches of any other religious sect 
in the world. Thousands of pounds have been spent, 
and are spent every year, upon the re-decoration of 
their places of worship. Temples which were built at 
the beginning of the epoch of Buddhism still exist, their 
magnificence has been added to year by year, and so they 
have attained their present artistic perfection. The 
adornment of the temples was the first important step 
made by the Japanese in art. Priests from China and 
Korea came over to teach them the first rudiments of 
painting and carving, and the first people to indulge 
in the art, which has now become world-renowned, 
were the priests, who by trying to propitiate their 
deities, built temples sacred to them, moulded images, 
and adorned shrines, no tawdry imitation gold, but 
shrines as brilliant now as when they were lacquered 
hundreds of years ago. One is forced to ask how 
these temples, insecurely built of wood, have been 



204 TEMPLES AND THEIR GODS 

able to withstand the elements for many years, or 
how they have succeeded in resisting the hundreds of 
earthquakes which take place all over the country 
every year ? The answer the Japanese make is by 
pointing to the cryptomerias which surround the 
temples like so many sentinels. These trees are the 
guardian angels of their temples. The winds cannot 
penetrate through the thickness of their foliage, and 
for that reason they are preserved. Being so lightly 
constructed they can also better withstand a severe 
earthquake, because, offering less resistance, they can 
shake more easily and with less risk of destruction 
than if they were built of solid masonry. Whether 
these answers are correct is matter of conjecture. It 
is, however, a fact that they do withstand wind, rain, 
and earthquakes far better than the ordinary Japanese 
house which is more exposed. 



CHAPTER XI 

« SAYONARA " 

Changes take place at all times and in all countries ; 
some are beneficial, others detrimental to the people 
amongst whom they are instituted. In fairness to all 
changes, one must acknowledge the good whilst 
minimising as much as possible the evil derived. 
Farewell to Japan, a country whose people are the 
delight of almost all with whom it is their fortune 
to come in contact : a nation of good manners and 
scrupulous cleanliness. 

Once whilst riding in a rickisha at Yokohama I 
had the misfortune to be run down by a hand-cart, 
my rickisha was overturned, my coolie lay grovelling 
in the road, his carriage shafts smashed, whilst the 
offending carman was uninjured. My coolie, in the 
heat of the moment, commenced upbraiding the ag- 
gressor, who, to my astonishment, stood meekly silent 
when I expected retaliation, because if one was guilty 
of negligence proper, the other was guilty of con- 



206 "SAYONARA" 

tributory negligence by running down a crowded 
thoroughfare too fast. After listening for a few 
moments to the anger of my coolie, the laury driver 
simply put his hand to his head with a bow, and my 
man realised that he was addressing and haranguing 
a fellow-creature with his head covered. Instantly he 
removed his hat, and, with many apologies for his 
rudeness, gathered together the fragments of his 
broken rickisha, and, thoroughly ashamed of his 
behaviour, went off without another word. Can the 
good manners and politeness of the Japanese still be 
doubted, when amongst the lowest classes a reproof 
such as I have mentioned is received without a word 
in reply .f* What would have happened between a 
cabby and a carman ? I do not think politeness 
would have been the outcome of a smash between 
them, and even should the carman have reproved the 
cabby for addressing him with his hat on, the latter 
would have considered such a remark as adding insult 
to injury, and would have given vent to even stronger 
language. 

No, I defy any one to accuse the Japanese of con- 
duct, either amongst themselves or towards a foreigner, 
which is not the essence of politeness and good 
manners. You will not be laughed at if you do or 



POLITENESS 207 

say anything which may appear to them extraordinary, 
because they attribute your mistake to ignorance of 
their language or customs. They will rather try to 
explain to you your mistake, but will do it so discreetly 
that you must take it in good faith and without 
offence. Germans bring their heels together and 
bow politely ; Frenchmen bow and scrape and make 
pretty speeches; Englishmen slap each other on the 
shoulder and say " Hello, old man," or " How's 
the world been treating you .? " Each man is polite 
according to his own lights, but is it politeness which 
appeals to any foreigner .? A German considers the 
Englishman rude and the Frenchman outwardly 
good-mannered ; the Englishman considers both their 
bows superfluous, whilst the Frenchman fails to 
understand either ; and yet the three nations will 
acknowledge the politeness of O Miya San when she 
bows to them and wishes them her "0 Hayo'''' 
("good-day"). 

Politeness is not their sole charm, though it is 
a great factor in their lives, and is an accomplishment 
any one can practise, if not imitate. Their dress, 
their smiles and happy faces, the way they walk, eat 
and drink — everything they do is delightful. It is 
not so much what they do, it is the way they do it. 



208 "SAYONARA" 

How curious it is to mark the rapid expansion of 
the country, which barely forty years ago was in a 
semi-savage state, at any rate as savage and un- 
disciplined as the Patagonians or the inhabitants of 
Central China are to-day. How odd to think that 
but a few years ago Japan had no real laws or 
government, no army or navy, except an untrained, 
uneducated band of patriots, who, fired with the zeal 
of loyalty, were willing to fight for their country — 
a country whose commerce has expanded, whose 
industries have become world-renowned. They have 
in these few years developed from a nonentity to a 
country respected amongst the nations of Europe. 
They have learnt in less than fifty years what it has 
taken us centuries to understand. Is all this due to 
civilisation, or is it due to a natural instinct fostered 
by the germ of civilisation .? 

It is curious on the eve of departure to retrace 
one's steps, to think back of the people and their 
houses, to realise the lack of disorderly behaviour, 
the absence of riot and criminal intention, to try 
and find fault with them individually or as a nation. 
It is pleasant to remember their kindness, however small, 
the courtesy and deference with which they treat 
a stranger. No bad-tempered speech escapes their 



REGRETS 209 

lips ; curses are unknown in their language ; they live 
a peaceable, orderly, well-regulated life. 

The charm of the people does not alone account 
for the pleasures of living in the land. The country 
possesses scenery, both natural and cultivated, which 
it is hard to find anywhere else. Is it a wonder, 
then, that so many people go there and find it so 
hard to leave ? The end is about to come, however, 
and with it the remembrances of sundry acts of kind- 
ness which, at the time, were too minute to strike 
one, but which one remembers always, alas ! too late. 
You notice things, but fail to realise that they were 
done intentionally. You observed how the floral 
decorations were daily altered by your host, but 
forgot to thank him, and failed to understand that 
he intended it as a mark of respect, and with the idea 
of giving you pleasure. The end must come, and, 
with it, the painful good-bye. 

When a sojourn in that country comes to an end, 
it is pleasant to feel that one has only happy reminis- 
cences to take away. A sad farewell, but with the 
recollection of the pleasant days spent there, and the 
great hope of a speedy return to the land of the 
Rising Sun. 

The steamer was ready in the harbour to take 



210 -SAYONARA" 

me away from Japan. O Ainosuki San came down 
to the wharf to bid me a last farewell. She was 
the little maid who had made me comfortable at 
the tea-houses, a guide, companion, and faithful 
friend. She brought the futon and spread it 
ready on the floor, made my tea and cooked my 
food, mended my things, a mother, nurse, and sweet- 
heart in one — every one has a sweetheart in Japan. 
The farewell is not merely a good-bye to the charms 
of a country, it is also the parting from one to 
whom one owes gratitude for her kindness and pains- 
taking care. Both farewells are hard, though the 
one involves more sentiment than the other. I must 
pass quickly over the parting, though the memory 
of it is all that remains. The steamer was riding 
at anchor outside the bay — the steamer that has 
witnessed many a good-bye both before and since. 
I stood in the bows alone, and with my glasses I 
scanned the shore. There in front was the Grand 
Hotel with its verandah crowded with people who 
were destined to remain longer in the country; on 
the right the English Club, where I had spent many 
a pleasant day ; beyond, the shops where I had made 
purchases ; Tamamura, where photographs of all the 
beauties of Japan were offered for sale, a corner shop 



THE LAST LOOK 211 

in the Benten dori ; Numashima, where some of the 
finest curios of Japan were displayed. Standing there 
and recalling all this, every street corner brought 
back some reminiscence of the past weeks, and made 
me wish for the scheduled time when the steamer 
should proceed on her way. The steam-launch that 
had brought us to the ship was landing those we 
left behind, handkerchiefs were still waving, and at 
length, with one last shrill note from the syren, the 
screw began to move, and the steamer proceeded on 
her homeward route. There in the distance was 
Fuji, with the sun illuminating her snow-clad peak — 
a last look, and then another good-bye. 

Passing down the East coast, land always in sight, 
I remembered the promontory of Enoshima where I 
had watched children, with their younger burdens on 
their backs, shell picking ; behind, Kamakura with 
its wonderful statue of the Great Buddha ; here and 
there, dotted about, I could see the Japanese junks 
and fishing-boats, even fancied I could still hear the 
talk and see the faces. The steamer passed on, night 
set in, and with it came the realisation that the end had 
come, that I was leaving the country I long to revisit. 

Next morning we were in the inland sea. A 
glorious sunny day, pleasure-boats and fishing- 



212 "SAYONARA" 

smacks right and left crowded with people in their 
coloured dresses ; on the right, village after village, 
one more picturesque and quaint than the other. 
There was the flourishing town of Osaka with its 
many bridges and crowded streets, its Government 
buildings, and its ancient castle standing upon a hill, 
with the two golden dragons keeping guard on the 
roof. Lower down I saw Kobe again, a town as 
European as Osaka was native, its harbour crowded 
with steamers busily loading and unloading mer- 
chandise. We proceeded, wending our way through 
innumerable islands, some covered with luxuriant 
vegetation, others bare, a fitting contrast. I saw 
Onomichi again, where the children used my legs 
as bridges, and the elder ones amused themselves 
by comparing heights ; close to it was Ujima where 
the police officer politely informed me that cameras 
were tabooed. We passed through straits so narrow 
it seemed almost impossible for such a huge ship 
to navigate them in safety, a twelve-knot current 
running between the islands and the mainland. On 
our left was the Island of Miyajima with its float- 
ing temple and tame deer, and in front Moji, the 
entrance to the Straits of Shimonoseki, and the exit 
to the inland sea. An hour's passage took us through 



.* 




To face p, 212 



32. SAYONARA. 



THE END 213 

them and we emerged into the open sea, the last of 
the north island of Japan. 

The following day we reached Nagasaki. The 
landing again, the seeing the same kind of scenery, 
the same race of people, until the final parting, 
was delightful. Towards evening the steamer left 
Japan, left the country where so many happy weeks 
had been spent. This time it meant farewell, at any 
rate for years, perhaps for ever. The sun went down 
and the moon rose, only next day to give place 
again to the sun. Was it the same sun that shone 
on the open sea, the same rays that lit up the crests 
of the waves .? It seemed different, and yet we know 
it was the same. An illusion because the surround- 
ings were missing, Japan being no more there to 
enchant. A feeling of melancholy crept over one, 
although the sun was as warm, the sky and sea as 
blue as the day before. Was it this that accounted 
for the difference, the knowledge that the past weeks 
were gone never to return ? The melancholy feeling, 
the loneliness was accounted for in the one word 
" Sayonaray*^ the farewell to Japan. 



INDEX 



Acrobatic feats of the Japanese, 

107 
Actors, their dress, 131 ; walk, 

131 ; position in society, 132 ; 

the no, 135 ; the kibuki, 135 
Adams, Will, on the character of 

the Japanese, 62 ; his views on 

their rehgion, 182 
Agricultural industry, decline of, 

147 

Akasaka, annual garden fete at, 
22 

Alcock, Sir Rutherford, on the 
children of Japan, 92, 112 

Ama - terasu, the sun goddess, 
178 ; legend of, 193 ; her shrine 
at Ise, 193 

Amida, the god, 194 ; his image 
at Kamakura, 194 ; expression 
on the face, 195 ; " The Bound- 
less Light," 195 

AniJiia-san, yj 

Annai-jo, or letter of introduc- 
tion, 78 

Arashiyama, 7 

Architecture, European, 32 

Art of Japan, 28 ; its scriptural 
nature, 32 ; unconventional 
method, 34 ; Living, meaning 
of the term, 35 ; definition, 53 ; 
loss of, 138 



Artists, their method of painting, 
30? 35 ; unconventional method, 
34 ; painting while drunk, 39 

Asama or Sengen, goddess of 
Mount Fujiyama, 26 

Atami, geyser at, 86 

Azaleas, 20 



Ba-t6 Kwannon, 202 
Balls, playing with, 105 
Base-ball, mode of playing, 104 
Bath, size of, 81 ; mode of taking 

a, 81-85 
Baths, public, number of, at 

Tokyo, 91 
Baths, sulphur, at Kawara-yu, 87 ; 

at Yumoto, 88 ; number of, a 

day, 89 
Baths, thermal, 86 
Bed, method of making a, 75 
Bed-time, hour of, 75 
Benten, the goddess, 201 
Binzuru, the god. Healer of the 

Sick, 197 
Bishamon, the god, 201 
Biwa, Lake, 25 
Blossoms, cherry, 12, 19; plum 

18 
Bon Matsuri, or Feast of Lan- 
terns, 102 



216 



INDEX 



Boots, removal of, 74, 80 

Boxer War, 158 

Boys, their education, 55 ; man- 
ners, 94 ; festival, 100 

Brahminism, downfall of, 184 

Bridge, the sacred red, of Nikko, 
188 ; legend, 189 

Brownell, Mr., his book on Japan, 
168 

Buddha, the worship of, 145, 164, 
167 ; introduction into Japan, 
170, 182, 185 ; into China, 170 ; 
temples, 180; legend, 184; 
sects, 185 ; characteristics, 195; 
compared with Roman Catho- 
licism, 197, 198, 202 ; decora- 
tion of the temples, 203 

Butterfly trick, the paper, 106 



Cabinetmaker's workshop, rout- 
ine, 49-5 1 
Canton, its odours, 42 ; condition, 

151 

Cards, flower, 11 1 ; turampu, 
III 

Carvings, wood, at Kioto, 46 

Ceylon, 183 

Chamberlain, Mr. Basil Hall, his 
lines on Mount Fujiyama, 25 ; 
on the number of baths a day 
taken by the Japanese, 89 ; on 
the origin of the Evening of 
Stars festival, loi ; on the im- 
pression produced by the god 
Amida, 195 

Chaya, or tea-houses, 73, 78 

Cherry blossoms, 12, 19 ; art of 
arranging, 37 ; dance, 20, 116 

Children, their disposition, 92 ; 



appearance, 93 ; custom of 
shaving the heads, 94 ; num- 
ber, 112 

China, peonies, 21 ; legends, loi, 
103; use of fireworks, 102 ; gam- 
bhng, no; result of the war 
with Japan, 142 ; the worship 
of Buddhism, 145 ; advance of 
civilisation, 150 ; condition of 
Canton, 151 ; massacre at Port 
Arthur, 154; the Boxer War, 
158 ; result of missionary work 
in, 164 ; introduction of Bud- 
dhism, 170, 183 

Chinese, their hatred of mission- 
aries, 168 ; pigtail, 168 ; cost 
of converting, 173 ; prayers for 
the dead, 175 

Chopsticks, use of, 71, 122 

Chrysanthemums, 21 

Chuzengi, Lake, 188 

Civilisation, result of, 136 

Cleanliness of the Japanese, 89, 
90, 205 

Cloisonne industry, 47 

Coolies, employment of, 112 

C ortes,i72 

Cryptomeria trees, 180, 190, 191, 
204 

Customs of the Japanese, 79 



Dai Nippon, or " Rising Sun," 

55 
Daibutsu, or Great Buddha, 

194 
Daikoku, the God of Wealth, 

201 
Dainty OS, 65 
Daiya-gawa River, 16, 188, 189 



INDEX 



217 



Damascene industry, 45 
Dance, the cherry, 20, 116 ; the 

devil's, 123 
Dangozaka, 22 

Danjurd, his theatrical perform- 
ance, 127-129 ; versatility, 130 ; 

contortions of his face, 132 
Daruma, the god, 199; legend 

of, 199 
Decorations of houses, art of 

arranging, 18,37 
Devil's dance, 123 
Diosy, Mr. Arthur, "New Far 

East," 186 ; on the future of 

Japan, 186 
Divorce, rules of, 61 
Dolls, number of, 98 
Dress, colours of, 3 ; fashions in, 

56; style of, on the stage, 131, 

132 
Drunkenness, 39 
Duelling, form of, 97 



Ebisu, the patron god of labour, 
200 ; festival of, 103 

Eczema, disease of, 94, 104 

Egypt, art of, 32 

Embroideries at Kioto, 46 

Emma-6, the god, judge of the 
dead, 200 

Enoshima, promontory of, 211 

Eta^ the, 64 

Europe, art of, 32 ; its decline, 33 ; 
adornment of modern churches, 
33 ; compared with Japanese 
art, 35 ; emancipation of the 
modem woman, 59 ; countries 
of, compared with the East, 
137 ; changes in, 144 



Europeans and Japanese, com- 
parison between, 79 

Evening of Stars, origin of the 
festival, loi 

Fan, or ogi, 67 

Fan-tan., Chinese game of, no 

Festal days, annual, 20 

Fireworks, use of, in China, 102 

Fish, paper, 100 

Fleet, size of the, 142 

Flower cards, no 

Flowers, Land of, name given to 
Japan, 17 

Flowers, varieties of, 20 

Forfeit, or ken., 108 

France, missionaries of, 155 ; 
Triple Alliance of 1895, 156; 
relations with Russia, 156 

Fudo, the God of Wisdom, 200 

Fujikawa River, 8 ; trip down the, 
8 ; hght effects, 9 

Fujiyama, Mount, 5, 8 ; view of, 
24, 27 ; poems on, 25 ; tradition, 
25 ; shape, 26 ; ascent of pil- 
grims, 26 ; goddess of, 26 ; 
height, 26 ; picture of, 30 ; last 
view of, 211 

Fukurokuju, the god, 201 

Funa-goko, or halo, 195 

Futon motte koi, 75 

Gambling, habit of, no 
Games, number of, 104-106, 108- 

112 
Gammon-ga-fuchi tea-house, 15 
Gardens, arrangement of, 15, 28 
Gautama, King of Kapilavastu, 

184 



218 



INDEX 



Geisha, their performance of the 
cherry dance, 20, 1 16-1 19; 
character of the country and 
town, 114, 126; music, 117; 
vocation, 119; beauty, 119; 
mode of walking, 120; serving 
refreshments, 121 ; posings and 
movements, 123; changing the 
kimonos, 124; handling chop- 
sticks, 125 ; manners, 125 

Germany, Emperor William, his 
Kaiserbild, 159 

Germany, Triple Alliance of 1895, 
156; in possession of Kiao- 
Chou, 157, 158 

Geta, or wooden clogs, 56, 57 

Geyser at Atami, 86 

Girls, their education, 56 ; annual 
holiday, 98 ; games, 108 

Go, game of, iii 

Gods of Japan, 192 ; Ama-terasu, 
193; Amida, 194; Binzuru, 197 ; 
Daruma, 199 ; Emma-6, 200 ; 
Fudo, 200 ; Hotel, 195 ; Jizo, 
199 ; Kishi Bojin, 196 ; Kishn5, 
196; Kwannon, 201; " Shichi 
Fukujin," or the seven gods of 
luck, 200 

Gotemba, 12, 24 

Greece, art of, 32 



Hair, arrangement of, 40 
Hakone district, 86 
Hana-garuta, or flower cards, 1 10 
Hana-hana, game of, 109 
Maori, or cape, 66 
Heads, custom of shaving, 94, 

104 
Hibachi, or small jar, 23, 71 



Higon, festivals of, 99 
Holidays, number of, 95-104 
Horikoshi Shu, 130. See Danjuro 
Hotel, one of the seven gods of 

luck, 93, 195, 201 
Houses of the Japanese, 6, 23 ; 
decoration, 18, 37; style, 70, 71 ; 
interior, 71, 74; mode of build- 
ing, 79 



lEYASU, tomb of, 189 

Ikao, 87 

In-ro, or medicine chest, 67 

India, Buddhism in, 183 

Irises, 21 

Irving, Sir Henry, his stage-walk, 

131 
Ise, Temple of, 178, 179, 181, 193, 

194 
Italy, art of, 36 
Iwa-zaru, 196 
Iwabuchi, 8 
Izanagi, 178, 181, 193 
Izumo, Temple of, 103, 181 



Japan, names given to, 17 ; same- 
ness, 17 ; interior of the houses, 
71, 74 ; its volcanic nature, 86 ; 
theatre, 127 ; date of its discov- 
ery, 136; result of civilisation, 
137-141, 143; loss of artistic 
taste, 138, 143 ; character of the 
people, 140-142 ; rapid expan- 
sion, 142, 208; fleet, 142; result 
of the war with China, 142, 157 ; 
worship of Buddhism, 145; mis- 
sionaries, 146 ; prosperity, 148 ; 
influences of civilisation, 1 50 ; 



;% 



INDEX 



219 



conflicting testimonies, 153 ; 
massacre at Port Arthur, 154 ; 
maxim, 155; result of mission- 
ary work in, 165 ; introduction 
of Buddhism, 170, 182, 185 ; the 
Shinto rehgion, 178-182; tem- 
ples of, 190; gods, 192; farewell 
to, 213 
Japanese, colours of the dresses? 
3, 41 ; language, 4, 69; stature, 
5, 66 ; houses, 6, 23, 70 ; wages, 
9, II, 49 ; food, 9 ; villages, 13; 
tea-houses, 15; gardens, 15, 
28 ,• hospitality, 16 ; legends, 
19 ; annual festal days, 20 ; 
character, 24, 31, 62, 69, 115, 
140-142, 146, 153, 208 ; artistic 
taste, 30, 36-41 ; method of 
painting, 30, 35 ; imitations, 31; 
patience, 37 ; drunkenness, 39 ; 
women, 40 ; education of boys^ 
55 ; girls, 56 ; fashions in dress, 
56, 69 ; position of the women, 
57 ; the men, 64 ; character- 
istics, 65, 81 ; compared with 
Europeans, 79 ; customs, 79 ; 
cleanliness, 89, 90, 205 ; chil- 
dren, 92-94 ; manners of the 
boys, 94 ; number of holidays, 
95-104 ; games, 104-106, 108- 
112; acrobatic feats, 107; in- 
vention of words and names, 
112; style of acting, 127; 
industry, 146, 148 ; toleration 
of missionaries, 168 ; cost of 
converting, 173 ; delight in 
novelty, 173; reHgion, 173, 
174; filial piety, 175; mor- 
ality, 176 ; decoration of their 
temples, 203 ; manners, 205 ; 



politeness, 206 ; acts of kind- 
ness, 209 

Jimmu Tenno, Emperor, cele- 
bration of his death, 99 

Jinrickishas, or small carriages, 5 

Jizo, the God of Compassion, 199 ; 
legend of, 199 

Jugglers, 105 

Jurokujin, the god, 201 



Kakemono, 29, 30, 36 

Kamakura, image of Amida at, 
194, 211 

Kami, the, 178 

Kapilavastu, Gautama, King of, 
184 

Katana, or curved sword, 129 

Kawara-yu, sulphur baths at, 
87 

Ken, or forfeit, 108 

Kiao-Chou, 157, 158 

Kibuki theatres, 135 

Kika-zaru, 196 

Kimmei, Emperor of Japan, 170 ; 
his views on Buddhism, 182 

Kimono, 5, 56, 66, 92 ; colours 
of the, 14, 20, 47 ; preparation 
of, 40 ; price, 57 ; method of 
changing, 124 

Kioto, 25, 114 ; avenues of cherry 
blossom at, 19 ; damascene in- 
dustry, 45 ; wood-carvings, 46 ; 
embroideries, 46 ; cloisonnS in- 
dustry, 47 

Kishi Bojin, the goddess, 196 

Kites, flying, 97 

Kitsune, games of, 108 

Knollys, Major, his " Sketches of 
Life," 198 



220 



INDEX 



Ko-no-Hana-Saku-ya-Hime, the 
Goddess of Mount Fujiyama, 
26 

Kobe, 212 ; the satsuma at, 43 

Kodzu, 26 

Koi^ or carp, 103 

Korea, 170, 182 

Koshin, or Sam biki-zaru, 196 

Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy, 
201 ; the owner of the gem 
Nyo-i-rin, 202; number of 
followers and names, 202 



Lacquer work, 48 

Language, 4, 69 ; the old, use of, 

on the stage, 135 
Lanterns, Feast of, or Bon Mat- 

suri, 102 
Legends of the Japanese, 19 
Living Art, meaning of the term, 

35 

Lotus flowers, weeding and pick- 
ing, 14 

Luck, the seven gods ot, 200 



Macao, island, 166 

Machinery, works of art manu- 
factured by, 49 

Makiira^ or pillow, 76 

Manners of the Japanese, 205 ; 
of the boys, 94 ; of the Geisha, 

I2S 

Maple tree, 21 

Marriages, mode of arranging, 60 
Medicine-chest, or in-ro, 67 
Men, grades of, 64 ; character- 
istics, 65 ; stature, 66 ; dress, 
66, 69 



Mexico, the Aztecs of, 172 

Mi-zaru, 196 

Mia, or Shinto temples, 181 

Mikado, his annual garden f^te, 
22 

Missionaries, 161 ; their influence 
in Japan, 146 ; funds of the 
societies, 162 ; converts, 162 ; 
character, 163 ; result of their 
work in China, 164 ; in Japan, 
165 ; method of teaching, 166, 
171; various sects, 168 j per- 
severance, 171 

Miyajima, Island of, 212 ; temple, 

191 
Miyanoshita, 26 ; sulphur springs 

at, 86 
Mogi, 28 
Moji, 212 
Moon god, 178 
Mousmd, dress of a, 73 
Music, 117, 130 



Nagasaki, 213 

Nagoya, 26 ; " tubbing " arrange- 
ments at, 89 

Nakodo, his mode of arranging 
marriages, 60 

Ne-san or Mousme, 76 

Netzuke, 67 

New Year, mode of celebrating, 

95 

Ni-ju-hachi Bushu, 202 

Nikko, temples at, 16, 46 ; carv- 
ings, 46 ; the home of the gods, 
188; sacred red bridge, 188; 
legend, 1 89 ; temple of Ya- 
kushi, 190 

Nikolo'i, Bishop, 186 



m 



INDEX 



221 



Nirvana, doctrine of, 185 
No, theatres, 135 
Nyo-i-rin, the gem, 202 ; Kwan- 
non, 202 



O AiNOSUKi San, 68, 210 

O Kiku San, 68 

O Umo San, 74 

Obi, or sash, 41, 56, 66, 73 

dgl, or fan, 67 

Onomichi, 212 

Osaka, 212 ; odours of, 42 



Painting, method of, 30, 35 

Painting, Satsuma, 43 

Peonies, 21 

Perry, Commodore, 137 

Peru, the Incas of, 172 

Pilgrims, their ascent of Mount 

Fujiyama, 26 
Pisarro, 172 
Plum blossom, 18 
Poker, introduction of, in 
Politeness of the Japanese, 81, 206 
Port Arthur, massacre at, 154; 

seizure of, 156 



Rapids, shooting the, 8 

Reading, mode of, 79 

Recitation, mode of, 123 

Refreshments, mode of serving, 
122 

Religion, 161 

Rickisha, 5 ; drive in a, 6 

Roman Catholic religion com- 
pared with Buddhism, 197, 198, 
202 



Rome, churches of, 33 

Russia, agricultural industry in 
147; Triple Alliance of 1895, 
156; seizure of Port Arthur, 
156, 158 ; relations with France, 
156 

Ry5bu Shinto religion, 181 



Sai no Kawara River, 199 
Sak^, the national beverage, 23, 

39, 121 
Sam biki-zaru, or Koshin, 196 
Samisen, 105, 201 
Samurai, 65 
Satow, Sir Ernest, on the doctrine 

of Nirvana, 185 
Satsuma, painting, 43 
"Sayonara," 213 
Sen-ju Kwannon, 202 
Sengen or Asama, Goddess of 

Mount Fujiyama, 26 
Shanghai, case of a missionary 

at, 172 
Sharmeen, island of, 151, 152 
Shaving heads, custom of, 94, 

104 
Shelley, lines from, 10 
Shi-zoku, or civilian, 65 ; costume 

66 
" Shichi Fukujin," or the seven 

gods of luck, 103, 200 
Shima, province of, 193 
Shimonoseki, Straits of, 212 
Shin-ju, or dual suicide, 63 
Shingon sect, 185 
Shinto rehgion, 178-182 ; temples, 

179 ; mythological legends 

181 
Shire-zake, a beverage, 99 



222 



INDEX 



Shodo Shonin, legend of, 189 

Shoji, Lake, 12 

Shotoku Taishi, Prince Regent of 

Japan, 185 
Shoyuka-no-Baba, 199 
Siddhartha, 184. See Buddha 
Sign-boards, 112 

Soga-no-Iname, embraces Bud- 
dhism, 183, 185 
Spain, history of Christianity in, 

172 
Springs, hot water, 86 ; sulphur, 

86 
Stars, Evening of, origin of the 

festival, loi 
Storm god, 178 
Street-sweepers, 64 
Styx, the, 199 
Suicide, dual, 63 
Sulphur springs, 86 ; at Kawara- 

yu, 87 
Sun, worship of the, 172 
Sun goddess, 178 
Sun, Land of the Rising, 55 ; 

name given to Japan, 17 
Susa-no-o, the storm god, 178 



Tabi, or thick socks, 66, 80 

Tango no Sekku, or boys' festi- 
val, 100 

Tea-houses, 15 ; mode of living 
in, 73; arrival at, 78,80; de 
parture from, 78 ; the visitors- 
room, 81 

Temples of Japan, 190 ; decora- 
tion, 203 

Tendai sect, 185 

Tera, or Buddhist temples, 181 

Theatre at Tokyo, 127 ; scenery* 



128 ; first performance, 128 ; 
the second, 130 ; dress of the 
actors, 131, 132 ; walk, 131 ; 
position in society, 132 ; lack 
of stage effects, 133 ; mode of 
lighting, 133 ; prompting, 133 ; 
date of, 134 ; the fio, 134 ; 
language, 135 ; kibuki, 135 

Thermal baths, 86 

Tokyo, avenues of cherry blossom, 
19 ; chrysanthemums, 21 ; yo- 
shiwara at, 57, 175 ; number 
of public baths, 91 ; theatre 
at, 127 

Tops, spinning, 106 

Torii, stone, 16, 29, 179 

Towels, size of, 82, 84 

Triple Alliance of 1895, 156 

Turampu, cards, 1 1 1 



UjiMA, 212 
Umbrella, 68 



Villages of Japan, 13 



Wages, amount of, 9, 11, 49 

Water springs, hot, 86 

Watts, Mr., 35 

Winter in Japan, 22-24 

Wistaria, arbours of, 15, 20 

Women, their artistic taste, 40 ; 
appearance, 40 ; hair, 40 ; dress, 
41, 56, 66, 69 ; social position, 
57 ; obedience, 59 ; marriage, 
60 ; divorce, 61 ; character of 
the lower classes, 143 

Wood carvings at Kioto, 46 



INDEX 



223 



Workmen, their method of work- 
ing, 52 
Writing, mode of, 79 



Xavier, St. Frangois, 161 



Yagu, or top quilt, 76 
Yakko, Madame, 120 
Yakushi, temple of, 46, 190; carv- 
ng on, 46 



Yellow Peril, allegorical picture, 

159 
Yokaichiba, 8 
Yokohama, 2 ; view of, 4 ; houses, 

70 
Yomeimon gateway, 189 
Yumoto, 188; baths at, 88 



Zoni^ 95 

Zori^ or straw sandals, 67, 80 



THE END 



Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &• Co. 
Edinburgh 6^ London 



.m 



